E. E. Evans-Pritchard-Theories of Primitive Religion (1965)

7/21/2019 E. E. Evans-Pritchard-Theories of Primitive Religion (1965)

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I

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II

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THEORIES OF

PRIMITIVE

RELIGION

BY

EV NS PRITCH RD

PROFESSOR

OF SO I L

NTHROPOLOGY

IN

THE UN IVERS ITY OF

OXFORD

OXFORD

AT

THE

CL RENDON PRESS


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i

Oxford

University

Press

Amen

House London E C 4

GL SGOW

NEW

YORK

TORONTO MEL OURNE WELLINGTON

OM Y C LCUTT M DR S K R CHI

L HORE D CC

C PE TOWN S LIS URY

N mC I m D N

KU L LUMPUR HONG KONG

Oxford University Press

965

/ : J 1 7 ~ 3 5

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3 ~ ~

P R IN T ED I N

GREAT

BRITAIN

Ai:: TH E

UNIV RSITY PR ESS

OXFORD

BY VIVIAN RI L R

PRINT R

TO TH E

UNIV RSITY

I

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FOREWORD

F

0 U R

of

these SirD. Owen Evans Lectureswere delivered

at

the University College

of

Wales, Aberystwyth,

in

th e

spring

of 1962. They

are presented almost entirely as

written for

that

occasion, though some paragraphs were not

spoken because the lectures would otherwise have exceeded

t he ti me al lot ted to me. The Lecture appearing as no.

IV

here was written at t he s am e t im e, bu t as I was asked to

give only four lectures,

it

was not delivered.

It will be appreciated that these lectures were for the ear

andnot for the eye; and also that they were spokento a highly

educated, but none the less a non-specialist, that is, n on

anthropological, audience.

Had

I been speaking to pro

fessional colleagues or even to anthropological students,

I w ou ld sometimes h av e expressed m ysel f

in

somewhat

different language, though to the same import.

In my comments on Tylor and Frazer, Levy-Bruhl, and

Pareto I have drawn heavily on articles published very many

years ago in the

Bulletin

the

Faculry

Arts

Egyptian

University Cairo),

in

w hi ch I on ce h el d t he Chair

of

Socio

logy articles

which have circulatedbetween then and now

in

departments

of

Social Anthropology in a mimeographed

form,

and

the main points

of

which are here set forth.

For criticism

and

advice I

thank Dr. R.

G. Lienhardt,

Dr.

J

H. M. Beattie, Dr. R. Needham, Dr. R. Wilson,

and

M r. M . D. McLeod.

E . E. E. -P.


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CONTENTS

I

INTRODUCTION

I

II

PSYCHOLOGICAL

THEORIES

20

III SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

4

8

IV LEVY BRUHL

7

8

v

CONCLUSION

10 0

BIBLIOGRAPHY

12

3

INDEX

13


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INTRO U TION

T

HESE lectures examine the

manner

in which various

writers who can be regarded s anthropologists,

or

at

any

rate

s writing

in

the anthropological field, have

attempted to understand and account for the religious be-

liefs

and

practices

of

primitive peoples. I should make it clear

. at the outset that I shal l be primari ly concerned only with

theories

about

the religions

of

primitive peoples. More general

discussions

about

religion outside those limits are peripheral

to

my

subject. I shall therefore keep to what

may

broadly

be considered to be anthropological writings, and for the

most

part

to British writers.You

w

note

that our

present \

interest

is l ss in

primitive religions

than i n

the various

theories which have been put forward purporting to offer

an

explanation

of

them.

If

anyone were to ask what interest the religions of the

simpler peoples can have for us, I would. reply in the first

place

that

some

of

the most

important

political, social,

and

moral philosophers from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to

Herbert

Spencer, Durkheim, and Bergson have considered

the facts

of

primitive life to have great significance for the

understanding of social life in general; and I would remark

further

that

the men who have been most responsible for

changing the whole climate

of

thought

in our

civilization

dur ing the last century, the g reat myth-makers Darwin,

Marx-Engels, Freud, and Frazer and perhaps I should add

Comte , all showed

an

intense interest

in

primitive peoples

and

used

what

was known

about them

in their endeavours to

convince us that, though what had given solace and en

couragement in the pas t could do

so

no more, all was

not

lost; seen down the vistas

of

history the struggle

did

avail.

In the second place, I would reply

that

primitive religions

;

are species

of

the genus religion, and

that

al l who have

any

823123 B


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2 INTRODUCTION

interest in religion must acknowledge

that

a study

of

the

religious ideas

and

practices of primitive peoples, which are of

great variety, may help us to reach certain conclusions about

the

nature

of religion in general, and therefore also

about

the

so-called higher religions or historical and positive religions

or

the religions of revelation, including ou r own. Unlike

these h ig he r religions, wh ic h a re genet ically

related-

I

udaism, Christianity, and Islam, or Hinduism, Buddhism,

and J ainism-primitive religions in isolated and widely

separated parts of the world can scarcely be other than in

fiependent developments without historical relations between

I

them, so they provide all the more valuable data for a com

I parative analysis aiming

at

determining the essential charac

, teristics of religious phenomena and making general, valid,

and significant statements about them.

I am of course aware that theologians, classical historians,

Semitic scholars,

and other students

of

religion often ignore

primitive religions as being of little account, but I take

comfort in the reflection that less than a hundred years ago

Max

iiller

was b at tl in g a ga in st t he s ame c om pl ac en tl y

entrench ed forces for the recognition of the languages and

religions o f Ind ia and

China as important

for

an

under

standing oflanguage and religion in general, a fight which it

is

t ru e h as y et t o be won where are the departments of com

parati ve linguisticsand comparativereligionin this country?),

but

in which some advance has been made. Indeed I w ou ld

go further and s ay t ha t, t o u nd er st an d fully

the nature of

l : e v e a l e c ~ ~ e l i g i o n , we h ave to u nd er st an d t he nature of so

c a l l e a i J . a t u r a L [ ~ l i g i o n , for nothing could have been revealed

about

anything

men

had not

already

had a n

idea

about

that

thing. Or rather, perhaps we should say,

t h ~ J ; l i c h o J 9 m y

between natural and revealed r e l i g i o n i s : . J ) J g : ~ p - d makes for

obscurity, for there

is

a good sense in which

it

may b e s ai d

that all religions are religions

of

revelation: the world around

them and t he ir r ea so n h av e e ve rywh ere re ve al ed t o

men

something of

the

divine and of their own

nature

and destiny.

We

might

ponder

the words

of

St. Augustine: What

is

now

called the Christian religion, has existed among the ancients,

and was not absent from the beginning

of

the human race,

..

INTRODUCTION 3

u nt il C hr is t c am e in t he flesh: from which time the true

religion, which existed already, began to

be

called Christian. I

I have no hesitation

in

claiming furthermore that though

students ofthehigher religions

may

sometimes look down their

noses at us anthropologists and our primitive

religions-we

have no texts-it is we more than anyone who have brought

together the vast material

on

a s tu dy

of

which the science

of

comparative religion has been, however insecurely, founded;

and, however inadequate the anthropological theories based

on it

may

be, they could serve, and sometimes have served,

classical,Semitic, and Indo-European scholars, and also

Egyptologists

in

the interpretation of their texts.

We

shall

be reviewing some

of

these theories in t he course

of

these

lectures, so I

may

here merely say

that

I have

in mind the

impact on many learned disciplines of the writings of Tylor

and Frazer in this country and of Durkheim,

Hubert

and

Mauss, and LeVy-Bruhl ill; France. We may not today find

them acceptable,

but

in the ir time the y have played

an

important

part

in th storyof thought.

It

is not

eas t define) what we are to understancl.by re

ligion for the purp2.se of these lectures. theirempl1a-sls- ---

fu-oe-on

beliefs and practices, we might well accep lnitially

Sir Edward Tylor s minimum definition of religion though

t he re a re

diffi iiiti es

attached to it) as beliefin spiritual

. beings, but since the emphasis is rather on theories of primi

tive religion, I am not free to choose one definition rather

than

another, since I have to discuss a

number

of hypotheses

whjch go beyond Tylor s minimum definition. Some

wouldrr

include under t he re ligi ous r ub ri c s uc h topi cs as magic,

l

totemism, taboo,

and

even

witchcraft-everything

that

is, )

which may be covered by the expression primitive men

tality or wha t to t he E ur op ea n s cho la r h as a pp ea re d t o e

irrational or superstitious. I shall have in p ar ti cu la r t o m ak e :

repea1ecf references to magic, because several influential

writers do not differentiate between magic

and

religion

and

speak of the magico-religious, or regard them as genetically

related in

an

evolutionary development; others again,

1 August.

etr

i.

13.

Quoted

in

F.

M.

Miiller, Selected ssu ys onLanguage

Mythology and Religion

1881,

5.


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\ \

I NT R ODUC T I ON 5

for primitive man s beliefs an d for the origin an d develop

m en t o f religion could ever have been propounded. It is no t

just

that we now know in the light ofmodern research what

their authors could not then have known. That

of

course, is

true; bu t even on the facts available to them

it

is astounding

that so much could have been written which appears to be-

contrary to common sense. Yet these men were scholars

an d

of great learning an d ability. To comprehendwhat now seem

to be obviously faulty interpretations

an d explanations, we

would have to write a treat ise on the climate of thought of

their time, the intellectual circumstances which set bounds

.J t? their thought, a curious mixture of positivism, evolution-

J;f-: -ism; an d the remains of a sentimental religiosity. We shall

be

l\

surveying some of these theories in later lectures,

bu t

I should

like here

an d

now to commend to you as a locus classicus the

at-one-time widely read an d influential Introduction to

the

istory Religion by F. Jevons, then (1896) a teacher of

philosophy

in

the University of Durham. Religion for hi m

was a uniform evolutionary development from

totemism

animism being rather a primitive philosophical theory than

a

rm

of religious

belief l-to

polytheism to monotheism;

bu t I do not intend to discuss, or disentangle, his theories.

I only ins tance the book as the best example I know for

illustrating how erroneous theories

about

primitive religions

can be, for I believe

it

would be t rue to say that there

is

no

general, or theoretical, statement ab ou t t hem i n it which

would pass muster today. It is a collection of absurdrecon

structions, unsupportable hypotheses arid conjectures, wild

--speculations, suppositions an d assumptions, inappropriate

analogies, misunderstandings

an d

misinterpretations, and,

especially in what he wrote about totemism, just plain non

sense.

If some

of

the theories pu t before you appear rather naIve,

I would ask you to bear certain facts in mind. Anthropology

was still in its

infancy-it

has ha rdly ye t grown up. Ti ll

recendy

it

has been the

happy

hunting ground of me n of

letters an d has been speculative

an d

philosophical in a rather

old-fashioned way. If psychology c an b e said to have taken

F. Jevons,

n Introduction to

the

istory Religion

18g6, p. 206.

4 I NT R ODUC T I ON

whilst distinguishing between them, give a similar type of

explanation of both.

Victorian an d Edwardian scholars were intensely inter-

ested in religions of

rude

peoples, largely, I suppose, because

they faced a crisis

in their own;

an d

many books an d articles

have been written on the subject . Indeed, were I to refer to

all their authors , these lectures would

be

clogged with a

recitation of names an d tides. Th e alternative I shall adopt

is

to select those writers who have been most influential or

who are most characteristic of one

or

other way of analysing

the facts, an d discuss their theories as representative

of

varieties of anthropological thought. What

ma y

be lost by

this procedure in detailed treatment

is

compensated for by

greater clarity.

Theories of primitive religion ma y conveniendy be con

sidered under the headings of psychological an d sociologi

_ _ _ the psychological being further divided in to - an d here I

use Wilhelm Schmidt s terms-intellectualist and emotion-

_-----alist theories. This classification, which also accords roughly

with historical succession, will serve its expository purpose,

though some writers fall between these headings

or

come

under more than one of them.

M y t re at me nt o f them may seem to you severe an d nega

tive. I think you will no t regard my strictures as too severe

when you see how inadequate, even ludicrous, is m uch o f

what has been written in explanation

of

religious phenomena.

Laymenmaynot be aware

that

most ofwhat has been written

in

the past, an d with some assurance, an d

is

still trotted ou t

in colleges

an d

universities, about animism, totemism,

magic, c., has been shown to

be

erroneous or

at

l e s ~

dubious. My task has therefore to

be

critical

rather

than

constructive, to show why theories

at

one time accepted are

unsupportable an d

had

or have, to be rejected wholly o r i n

part. If I can persuade you

that

much is still very uncertain

an d obscure, my labour will no t have been in vain. You w

then no t be under any illusion that we have final answers to

the questions posed.

Indeed, looking backwards, it is sometimes difficult to

understand howm an y o f the theories pu t forward to account


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6 I N T R O D U C T I O N

th e first steps towards scientific autonomy round about 1860

an d

no t to have rid itself

of

the trammels

of

its philosophical

past till forty or fifty years later, social anthropology, which

took its first steps at about the same time, has yet more

recently shed similar encumbrances.

It

is

a remarkable fact that none

of

the anthropologists

whose theories

about

primitive religion have been most in

fluential

ever been near a

p . i ~ t i v e

people. It is as though

a chemist hacf rever1irouglifit necessary-tOenter a labora

tory. They had consequently to rely for their information on

what

European explorers, missionaries, administrators,

an d

traders told them. Now, I want to make it clear

that

this

evidence is highly suspect. I do not say that it was fabricated,

though sometimes it was; an d even such famous travellers

as Livingstone, Schweinfurth,

an d

Palgrave were given to

gross carelessness. But much o f i t was false

an d

almost all

ofit was unreliable and, by modern standards of professional

research, casual, superficial, ou of

e ~ s p e c t i v e ,

o)ltof

c ) E < ; ~ t ;

an d

to some extent this was t rue

everiof

th e

earlier profes

sional anthropologists. I say with the greatest deliberation

about early descriptions of the simpler peoples ideas an d

behaviour,

an d

even more

of

the interpretations of them pu t

forward, that statements cannot be taken at their face value

an d

should n ot be accepted without critical examination

of

their sources an d without weighty corroborative evidence.

Anyone who has done research among primitive peoples

earlier visited by explorers an d others can bear witness that

their reports are only too often unreliable, even

about

mat

ters which

can

be noted by

bare

observation,while about such

matters as religious beliefs which

c an no t b e

so

noted their

statements may be qui te untrue . I give a single example

from a region with which I

am well acquainted.

In

view of

recent papers an d extensive monographs on the religions of

the Northern Nilotes, it is strange to read what the famous

explorer Sir Samuel Baker said about them in an address to

,the Ethnological Society of London

in

1866: Without an y

exception, they are without a beli ef in a Supreme Being,

nei ther have they an y form

of

worship or idolatry; nor is

th e darkness

qf

the ir minds enl ightened by even a

ra y

of

I

r

i

r

\

,

t

I N T R O D U C T I O N

7

superstition. Th e mind is as stagnant as the morass which

forms its

puny

world. l As early as 1871 Sir Edward Tylor

was able to show from the evidence even then available that

this could no t

be

true.

2

Statements

about

a people s religious

beliefs must always

be

treated with the greatest caution, for

we are then dealing with what ~ u r o p e ~ no r native

can directly observe, with C O I J ~ < ; p i o n s ,

i m a g ~ s w Q i . q ~

which

require for understanding a thorough knowledge

of

apeople s

langUage. an.d also

an

aw.arenes

.

s.of

_ . t . b e . ~ n t i r ~ ~ y ~ ~ e _ ~ 9 f i d e a s _

(

\\:

of which a n y ~ j : i c l J l a d i e . l i e L i s _ . p - a r t

for it m ay b e meaning-

-Tess wnen-dhrorced from the set o f beliefs an d practices to.

which it belongs. Very rarely could it be said

t h at i n

addition

to these qualifications the observer ha d a scientific habit

of

mind. It is true that some missionaries were well educated

m en a nd h ad l ea rn t to speak native languages with fluency,

bu t speaking a language fluently is very differe., lt f ~ . o m under-

standing it, as I have often obserVed in converse-between \

\ Europeans

an d

Africans

an d

Arabs.

Fo r

here there is

anew

\

1) ,ca 1se.of misunderstanclip.g,._a

frc:,s t:...

haza.rd, N a t i v e . a n d . )

missionary are using the same words bu t the. connotations.

are different , they carry different loads

of

zrieaillng:

someone who has not made an intensive study of na t ive [

institutions, habits, an d customs i n t he native s

oWn

milieu i

( that is, well away from adminis trat ive, missionary,

an d

trading posts) at best there can emerge a sort of middle,- . c

f ld ialect

in which it is possible to communicate about matters -

of

common experience an d interes t. We need only take for

example the use

of

a nat ive word for ou r God .

Th e mean-

ing of the word for the nat ive speaker ma y have only the

slightest coincidence,

a nd i n

a very restricted context, with

the missionary s conception

of

God. Th e late Professor Hocart

cites

an

actual example of such misunderstandings, from

Fiji: \ .

W he n t he missionary speaks of God as ndin he means that

all other gods ar e non-existent. Th e native understands that He

is

the only effective, reliable god; the others ma y be effective at

S. W. Baker,

T he

Races

of

the Nile Basin ,

Transaction

the Ethnological

Society

London N.S.

v (r867), 231.

2 E. B.

Tylor,

Primitive ulture 3rd

edit. (18g1), i. 423-4.


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/

-

8 INTRODUCTION

times, but are not to be depended upon. This is but one example

ofhow the teacher may mean one thing and his pupil understand

another. Qenerally the

t w 0 E < t J : ~ e _ ~ ~ Q l t i . . I l ~ e

b l i ~ s f u l l y i g n o r a n t of

the misunderstanding;-11lere is no remedy

for

i t, except in the

m i s ~ ~ i n g a thorough knowledge of native customs

and beliefs.

I

r

Furthermore, the reports.used

by

scholars to illustrate

I

their theories were not--only h i g . ~ l y i I . ~ < < : g u a t e but-and

I this is what chiefly relates to the topic of these lectures-

they were also highly selectAve . What travellers liked to put

i on paper

was

what

most struck

them

as curious, crude, and

I sensational. Magic, barbaric religious rites, superstitious

beliefs, took precedence over the daily empirical, humdrum

routines which comprise nine-tenths of the life of primi

tive man and are his chiefintexest andco:llcern: his hunting

and fishing and collecting of roots and fruits, his cultivating

and herding , his building, his fashioning of tools and

\ weapons, and

in

general his occupation in his daily affairs,

domestic

and

public. These were

not

allotted the space they

fill, in both time and importance, in the lives

of

those whose

way of

life was being described. Consequently, by..$Yins-__

i

undue

attention--to what they regarded as curious supersti

t ions, the occult and mysterious, observers tended to paint

a p ic tu re in which the mystical (in Levy-Bruhl' s sense of

that word) took up a far greater portion of the canvas than

i t has

in

the lives of primitive peoples,

so

that the empiri

cal, the ordinary, the common-sense, the workaday world

seemed to have only a secondaryimportance, and the natives

. were made to look childish and in obvious need of fatherly

J administration

and

missionary zeal, especially

there was

_ \

ayelcome bi t

of obscenity in their rites.

.-/

T ~ e n

the scholars got to work on the pieces of information

I I prOVIded for them haphazardly and from all over the world,

i

and built them into books with such picturesque ti tles as

1

The Golden

Bough and

The

ysticRose. These books presented

composite image,

or

r a t h ~ a r i c a t u r e , ofthe primitive

mind:

superstitious, childlike, incapable of eithercritical or sustained

thought. Examples of this procedure, this promiscJlOUS-...use

A. M. Hocart,

Mana , an

1914,46.

INTRODUCTION 9

of

evidence, might be culled from

any

writer

of

the period:

thus

The Amaxosa drink the gall ofan ox to make themselves fierce.

The notorious Mantuana drank the gall ofthirty chiefs believing

it

would render him strong. Many peoples, for instance the

Yorubas, believe that the 'blood

is

the life'. The New Caledonians

eat slain enemies

to

acquire courage and strength. The

flesh

of a

slain enemy is eaten in Timorlaut to cure impotence. The people

ofHalmahera drink the blood ofslain enemies in order to become

brave. In Amboina, warriors drink the blood ofenemies they have

killed to acquire their courage. The people of Celebes drink the

blood of enemies to make themselves strong. The natives of the

Dieri and neighbouring tribes will eat a man and drink his

blood

in order to acquire

his

strength; the fat

is

rubbed on sick people}

And

so

on an d on and on through volume after volume.

How well was this procedure satirized

by

Malinowski, to ,

whom

must go

much of

the credi t for having outmoded by

ridicule

and

example

both

the sort of inquiries which had

previously been prosecuted among the simpler peoples

and

the use scholars had

made of

them.

He

speaks

of

the lengthy

,litanies of threaded statement,

~

make us

n t r o p o l o ~ t s

l silly

and t h ~ s a , \ , , ~ g ~ J _ Q o k - r i d i G - 1 : l r o U S ;

such as

Among

the Brobdignacians sic whena

man

meets his

mother-in-law,-

the two abuse each other and each retires with a black eye';

When a Brodiag encounters a polar

bear

he runs away and

sometimes the

bear

follows'; In old Caledoniawhen a native

accidentally finds a whisky bottle by the road-side

he

empties

it at one gulp, after which he proceeds immediate ly to look

for another.'2 \

We have observed that selection on the level of bare (

observation

had

already prOCtucee(an initial distortion.

The

_

~ - - - -

'sctsSOIs-a iQ-paste method of c o m p i l a t i 6 i i - l 5 y ~ m c h a i r

scholars

at

home led to further distortion.

On

the whole, they

lackedany sense

2 f . b . i s t o r : i c a l ~ G . . i ~ m ,

the rules--anhistorian--

11

applies ~ l u a t i n g documentary evidence. Then, a

false impression was created by observers of primitive peoples

giving undue prominence to the mystical

in

their lives, it was

I A. E . Crawley, The

ysticRose

1927 edit. (revised

and

enlarged

by

Theodore Besterman),

134-5.

2

B.

Malinowski, Crime and Custom in Savage Society 1926, p. 126.


9/70

developments, decadence, survivals, o rby some other ev Q1 U:::_

Jionary trEk. For early anthropological theories, as you will

see in

my

next lecture, not only sought explanations ofprimi-

tive religion in psychological origins, bu t also attempted to

place it in an evolutionary gradation or as a stage in social

development. A chain oflogical developmentwasdeductively

constructed.

In

the absence

of

historical records

t

could

not

be

said withany conviction that

in

any particular instance his

torical development corresponded to the logical paradigm-

indeed from the middle

of

la st century there raged a bat tl e

between those in favour

of

the theory

of

progression

and

those

in favour of the theory of degradation, the former holding

that

primitive societies were

in

a state

of

early and, retarded

though it might be, progressive development towards civili

zation, and the latter

that

they had once been in a more

highly civilized condition and ha d regressed from it. The

debate especially concerned religion, it being held by the

one

party that

what they considered to be

rather

elevated

theological ideas found among some primitive peoples were

a first glimpse

of

truth

that

would eventually lead to higher

'things, and by the other party that those beliefs were a relic

o f an earlier and more civilized state. Herbert Spencer pre

served

an

open

mind on

this

issue 1 but

the other anthropo

logists, except Andrew Lang and to some extentMaxMiiller,

and sociologists were progressionists.

In

the absence

of

his torical evidence to show the phases rude societies have

in fact passed through, they were assumed to be of

an

ascend

ing,

and

very often

an

invariable, order. All

that

was required

was to find an example somewhere, no matterwhere, which

more

or

less

corresponded to one

or

other stage

of

logical de

velopment and to insert it as an illustration, or as the writers

seemed to regard it, as proof, of the historical validity of

this or

that

scheme ofunilinear progression. Were I address

ing a purelyanthropological audience, even to allude to such

past procedures might be regarded as flogging dead horses.

The difficulties were, I believe, i n G r e ~ s e d and the resultant

distortion

made

greater, by the ~ i _ : Q i I l g . x > - f . - s p c ~ to

-dq'cnJ?'i'frlln itive religions,

t r ~ t l i

mind

H. Spencer,

h

rinciples Sociology 1882, 106.

10 INTRODUCTION

embossed by scrap-book treatment, which was dignified by

being labelled

t :.e

'comparative method'. This consisted,with

respect to our

subject,

of

taking from the first-hand records

about primitive peoples, and willy-nil ly from all over the

world, wrenching the facts yet further from their contexts,

.

- . . ._u

__

. = =

only what referred to the s trange, weird, m y s t i c a l ~ super-

stitious use

which words we

may and

piec ing the bits

together in a monstrous mosaic, which was supposed to por

tray

the mind o - r - - p n m m v e - ~ m a n . Primitive man was thus

made

to appear, especially in Levy-Bruhl's earlier books, as

quite irrational (in the usual sense ofthat word), living in a

mysterious world of doubts and fears, in terror of the super

natural

and

ceaselessly occupied

in

coping with it. Such a

picture, I think any anthropologist of today would agree,

is

a tQ@1 distortion.

As

a matte r of fact, the 'comparat ive method' when so

used is a misnomer. There was precious little comparison,

, we

mean

a lytical c:pmparison. There wasmerelya 'E)iir;ging

together of items which appeared to have something in

coIIlmon. We can indeed say for

t

that i t

enaoledthewriters

to make preliminary classifications

in

which vast numbers

of

observations could be placed under a limited number

of

rubrics, thereby introducing some sort of order;

~ ~ u j h i

_ ~ _ l ~ e

But

t

was an ~ ~ ~ r a W e r than a compara

tIve metnbd, almost what psychologists used to cal l the

a n ~ c d o t a l IIlethod'. A large number of miscellaneous exam

ples W e r e < b r ~ g h t

together to i llus trate some general idea

and in support

of

the author's thesis about that idea. There

7was

no attempt to test theories by unselected examples.

The

~ ~ s t

elementary precautions were neglected as wild surmise

followed on wild surmise (called hypotheses).

The

simplest

rules

of

inductive logic (methods

of

agreement, difference,

and concomitant variations) were ignored. Thus, to give a

single example, if God is, as Freud would have i t, a projec

tion of the idealized and sublimated image of the father, then

clearly

it

is necessary to show

that

conceptions of deities vary

\ ~ i t the very different places the father has in the family in

different types of society. Then again, negative instances, if

considered at all, which was rare, were dismissed as later

INTRODUCTION


10/70

\-


of

the primitive was

so

different from ours

that

its ideas could

no t

be expressed in

ou r

vocabularies and categories. Primi

tive religion was 'animism', 'pre-animism', 'fetishism', an d

the like.

Or

terms were taken over from native languages,

as though none could be found in

ou r

own language re

sembling

what

ha d

to be described, such terms

as

taboo

(from

Polynesia), mana (from Melanesia), totem (from the Indians

o f N or th

America), an d baraka (from the Arabs

of North

Africa). I am

no t

denying that the semantic difficulties in

---a-anslation are great.

They

are considerable enough between,

shall we say, French an d English; bu t when some primitive

language has to be rendered into

ou r

own tongue they are,

and for obvious reasons,

much

more formidable.

They

are in

fact the major problem we are confronted with in the subject

we are discussing,

so

I hope I

m ay b e

allowed to pursue the

'\.

matter

a little further. an ethnographer says t ha t i n the

I: \

language

of

a Central African people the word

ango

means

dog, he would

be

entirely correct,

bu t

he has only to a very

~ m i t e d

degree thereby conveyed the meaning

of ango

for

what

it m e a B S t o ~ who use the word is very differ

en t

to

what

'dog' means to

an

Englishman.

Th e

significance

d W have for

~ t h e y

hunt with them, ffiey

ea t

tnem;

an d so o n -i s n ~ ~ m . ~ ~ i g n i f i . c a n c e . . t b . e 1 l a \ l e f o r _ u s . Ho w

much

greater

is t h e ~ l s p l a c e m e n t

likely to be whenwecome toterms

which have a I ? ~ ~ y s i ~ ~ ~ e r e n c e

On e

can, as has been

done, use native w o r d s ~ m d then demonstrate their meani .Ig

by their u s ~ i n d i f f e r e n 1 : q ~ n a U s i t u a _ t i o n s . But there

is

clearly a limit to this expedient. Reduced to an absurdity it

would

mean

writing an account of a people in their own ver-:

n a c u l a r . ~ h e

alternatives are perilous.

On e

can standardize

a word taken from a primitive vernacular, like totem:ana use

it

to describe phenomena among other peoples which re

semble

what

it refers to in its originarl:i 'ome; bu t this can

~ h e cause Qf

great confusion, because

t h e ~ i J l a n c e s .

ma y s u ~ f i c i a l and the phenomena in question so dl

~ e r s i f i e d t h a t tIreteirn loses all meaning,

which mdeed

as

Goldenweiser showed,rJias beent:6:efate

of

theword

totem

rIA. A. Goldenweiser,

Early Civilization

1921, pp. 282

fr

See al so

his

paper For m

and Content in Totemism',

American Anthropologist

N S xx (19

8

).

l

i

t,

I NT R ODUC T I ON 3

I emphasize this predicament because it has some impor

tance for an understanding of theories of primitive religion.

One may, indeed, find some word

or

phrase in one's own

language

by

which to translate a nat ive concept .

We m ay

translate some word

of

theirsoy god

or

'spirit'

or

'soul'

or

\ .::

'ghost',

bu t

then we have to ask

no t

only

what

theword we

so

,

y ~

__

\

translate means to the natives

bu t

also

what

thewordb y w h i c h /

.

it

is

translated means to the

translator

and his readers. We I

have to

dcterffiineadouble

_

e : E i l l g ; ~ ; c i . ~ i s t t l f e r e

can

be no more

than

a ~ r t i a l overlapof meaning between the

two

w o r ~

emantic difficulties

re

always considerable an d

ca n

only b e p overcome. he p roblem t hey p resent

m ay b e

viewed also in reverse, in the

a tt em pt b y

missionaries to

translate the Bible into native tongues.

It

was

ba d

enough

when Greek metaphysical concepts

ha d

to

be

expressed

Latin, and,

as

we know, misunderstandings arose from this

transportation

of

concepts from the one language into

th e

other.

Then

the Bible was translated into various other Euro-

I

pean languages, English, French, German, Italian, &c., an d

I have found it an i lluminating experiment to take some

portion

of

it, shall we say a Psalm, an d see how these different

languages have stamped it with their particular characters.

Those who know Hebrew or some other Semit ic language

ca n

complete the game

by

then translating these versions

back into its idiom an d seeing

what

they look like then.

H ow m uc h more desperate is the case of primitive lan

guages I have

read

somewhere

of

the predicament

of

mis

sionaries to the Eskimoes in trying to render into their tongue

the word ' lamb',

as

in

the sentence 'Feed

my

lambs'. You

can,

of

course, render it

by

reference to some animal with

which the Eskimoes are acquainted,

by

saying, for instance,

'Feed

my

seals', bu t clearly if you do

so

you replace the

r e p r e s e ~ i o n of what

a lamb was for a

Hebrew

shepherd

oY fl:la t of

what a seal may

be

to

an

Eskimo.

Ho w is

one

to convey the meaning of the statement that the horses of

the Egyptians

ar e

flesh and not spirit' to a people which

has never seen a horse

or

anything like one,

an d ma y

also

have no concept corresponding to the Hebrew conception of


11/70

I Bergson

The

Two Sources Morality

and Religion,

1956 edit. p 103.

2 Religion and the Anthropologists Blackfriars Apr. 1 960 . R eprinted in

Essays in Social

Anthropology,

1962

been the persons whose writings have been most influen

t ia l h av e b ee n at the time they wrote agnostics or atheists.

Primitive religion was with regard to its validity no different

from any other religious faith

an

illusion. It was notjust

that

they asked as Bergson

pu t

it how

it is

that beliefs

an d

prac

tices which are anything bu t reasonable could have been

an d still are accepted by reasonable beings .I It was rather

that implicit in their thinking were the optimistic convic

tions

of

the eighteenth-century rationalist philosophers that

people are stupid a nd b ad only because they have

ba d

in

stitutions an d they have ba d institutions only because they

are ignorant an d superstitious an d t he y a re i gn or an t an d

superstitious because they have been exploited in the name

of

religion

by

cunning an d avaricious priests an d the unscru

p ul ou s classes w hi ch h av e s up po rt ed t he m. We s houl d I

think realize what was the intention of many of these scholars

we are to understand their theoretical constructions. They

sought

an d

found

in

primitive religions a weapon which

could they thought

be

use d w it h dea dl y. effec t a ga in st

Christianity. Ifprimitive religion could be explained away as

an intellectual aberration as a mirage-induced

by

emotional

stress o r b y its social function it was implied that the higher

religions could be discredited an d disposed

o f i n

t he s am e

w ~ h i s

intention

is

scarcely concealed

in

some cases-

F r ~ _ ~ r King an d Clodd for example. I do no t doubt their

sincerity and as I have indicated elsewhere 2 they have

my

sympathy though not my assent. However whether they

were right or wrong is beside the point which is t ha t t he

impassioned rationalism

of

the time has coloured their assess

ment

of

primitive religions

and

has given their writings as

we r ea d t he m today a flavour of smugness which one may

find either irritating or risible. _

Religious beliefwas to these anthropologists absurd an d

it

is so to most anthropologists

of

yesterday an d today. But

some explanation of t he a bs ur di ty s ee me d t o b e r eq ui re d

a nd i t was offered in psychological or sociological terms. It

I


spirit? These are trite examples. Ma y I give two m or e com

plicated ones? How do-yo.1l..tr.anslateinto Hottentot Though

_

.

I speak with the tongues

of men

an d

of

angels an d have no t

charity ? In the first place you have to determine what

the passage

meant

to St. Paul s hearers; and apart from

t he

tongues of m en a nd of angels what exegetical learning has

gone to the elucidation of eros,

agape,

an d caritas Then you

have to find equivalents in Hottentot and since there are

n on e y ou d o t he best y ou c an . Or h ow do y ou render into

an Amerindian language I n the beginning was the word ?

... Even in its English form the meaning can o nl y b e se t f or th

~

theological disquisition. Missionaries have battled hard

an d with great sincerity to overcome these difficulties bu t

in my experience much of what they t e ~ ~ 1 1 . n a t i Y : e s j ~ _ 9 . 1 A ~

. u . n i u t d J i Z i Q ~ e to those among whomthey labour a nd m an y

of them would I think recognize this. The solution often

adopted

is

t o t ra ns fo rm t he mi nd s

of

native children into

European minds

bu t

t he n this

is

only i n a ppea ranc e a

solution. I must ha vi ng I ho pe b ro ug ht this missionary

problem to your attention now leave it for these lectures are

n ot o n missiology a fascinating field

of

research unhappily

as yet little tilled.

Nor do I t he re for e discuss t he m or e g en er al q ue st ion of

translation any further here for it cannot be treated priefly.

We all knowthe tag traduttore, traditore . I mention the matter

in my introductory lecture partly b ec aus e we h av e to bear

in mind in estimating theories of primitive religion what

the words used in them meant to the scholars who used them.

I f

one is to understand the interpretations

of

primitive men

tality they

pu t

forward one has to know t he ir own me n

tality broadly where they stood; to enter into their way of

looking at things a way

of

thei r class sex

an d

period. As far

as religion goes they all had as far as I know a religious

background in one form

or

another. To mention some names

which are most likely to be familiar to you: Tylor

ha d

been

brought

up

a Quaker Frazer a Presbyterian

Marett in

the

Church of

England Malinowski a Catholic while Durkheim

Levy-Bruhl a nd F re ud h ad a Jewish background; bu t with

one

or

two exceptions whatever the background

may

have

I NT R ODUC T I ON

15

I


12/70

Christian theology, history, exegesis, apologetics, symbolic

thought,

and

ritual, they would have be en much better

p la ce d to assess accounts of primitive religious ideas

and

practices. But it was rare indeed that those scholars who set

themselves up as authorities on primitive religion showed in

their interpretations that they had more than a superficial

understanding

of

the historical religions

and

of

wha t the

ordinary worshipper in them believes, what meaning what

he does h as for h im,

and

h ow h e

feels

w he n h e does i t.

What

I h ave said does not imply

that

the anthropologist.

h s to h av e a r el igi on

of

his own, and I t hi nk we shou ld be

clear

on

this p oin t

at

the outset. He is

not

concerned,

qu

anthropologist, with the t ruth or falsity of religious thought. ,

As I u nd er st an d t he m at te r, t he re is no possibility of his

knowin whether the spiritual beings

of

primitive religions or ;

of any others have any existence or not,

and

since

that

is the

case he cannot take the question into consideration.

The

be

liefs are for

him

sociologicalfacts, not theological facts,

and

his

sole concern

is

with th eir relatio n to each o ther and to o ther

social facts. His problems are scientific, not metaphysical or

ontological. The method he employs is that now often called

the phenomenological one a comparative study

of

beliefs

and

rites, such

as

god, sacrament,

and

sacrifice, to determine

their mean in g and social significance. The validity of the

belief.lies in the d omain

of

what

may

broadly

be

designated

the philosophy of religion.

It

was precisely because so many

anthropological writers did take up a theological position,

a lb ei t a n eg at iv e and implicit one, that they felt that

an

explanation of p ri mi ti ve rel igi ous p he no me na i n c au sa l

terms was required, going,

it

seems to me, b ey on d th e leg iti

mate bounds

of

the subject.

Later I shall em ba rk on a g en er al r evi ew

of

anthropo

logical theories

of relig io n. Permit me to say

that

I ha ve read

t he books I sh al l c ri ti ciz e, for o ne finds on ly too of te n that

students accept what o the rs h av e w ri tt en about wha t

an

au th o r wro te instead of read in g the author himself Levy

Bruhl s books, for example, have time and again been grossly

misrepresented by persons who, I

am

sure, have read them

either not at all or not with diligence). In making this review

823123 C

INTRODU TION

was th e intention of writers on primitive religion to explain

it by its origins, so the explanations would obviously account

for the essential features

of

all and every religion, including

th e h ig her on es. Eith er exp licitly or implicitly, explanation

of the religion of primitives was made out to hold for the

origins

of

all that was called early religion and hence

of

the

faith

of

Israel and,

by

implication,

that

of

Christianity which

arose from it. Thus,

as

Andrew Lang put i t, th e theoristwh o

believes in ancestor-worship

as

the key of all the creed s will

see in Jehovah a d ev elop ed ancestral g host, or a kind

of

fetish-god , attached to a

stone perhaps

an ancient sepul

chral stele of some desert sheikh. The exclusive admirer of

the hypothesis

of

Totemism will fin d evidence for his b elief

in

worship of t he g ol de n c al f

and

the bulls.

The

partisan of

n ature-wo rship will insist on Jeho v ah s con nectio n with

storm, thunder, and the fire of Sinai. 1

W e m ay, i nd ee d, w ond er w hy t he y did n ot tak e as their

first field

of

study the higher religions about whose history,

theology,

and

rites far more was k no wn than of the religions

of the p rimitives, thu s p ro ceed in g fro m the b etter k no wn to

the less known. They may to some e xt en t h av e i gn or ed t he

higher religions to avoid controversy

and

embarrassment in

the somewhat delicate circumstances then obtaining, but it

was chiefly because they wanted to discover the origin

of

re

ligion, the essence

of

it, and they thought that this would be

found

in

very primitive societies. However some of them may

have protested that b y o rigin they d id not mean earliest in

time

but

simplest in structure, the implicit assumption in

their arguments was

that

what was simplest in structure must

h ave b een

that

from which more developed forms evolved.

T hi s a mb ig ui ty i n t he c on ce pt

of

o ri gi n ha s c au se d m uc h

confusion in a nt hr opol ogy. I say no m or e

about

it at this

stage but I will r ev er t to it, and to o ther g en eral matters so

far briefly touched on, in my final lecture, by w hic h tim e I

shall h av e

had an

o pp ortun ity to p lace so me examp les of

anthropological theories

of

religion before you. We m ay,

however, note here

tha t had

the authors whose writings we

a re go in g to e xa mi ne read at a ll d ee pl y i nt o, s ha ll we say,

Andrew Lang,

aking

Religion 1898, p. 294.

INTRODU TION

7


13/70

times not b ee n k ep t distinct even i n t he m inds

of

good

scholars.

So

much

by way of some introductoryremarks whichwere

necessary before embarking

on

our voyage into

an

ocean of

past thought. As is th e case with any

an d

every science we

shall find o n man y a n isle the graves of shipwrecked sailors;

but

when welook back onthe whole history

ofhuman

thought

w e n ee d not despair because as y et we k no w

so

little of the

nature

of

primitive religion or indeed of religion

in

general

and

because we have to dismiss as merely conjectural merely

plausible theories purporting to explain it.

Rather

we mu st

take courage and pursue our studies in the spirit

of

the dead

sailor

of

the Greek Anthology epigram:

A shipwrecked sailor buried on this coast

Bids

you set sail.

Full many a gallant bark when

we

were lost

Weathered the gale.

18 INTRODU TION

we shall find

that

it will often be unnecessary for me to point

out the inadequacies of one or otherpoint

of

view because the

required criticism is contained in the writings of otherauthors

men tion ed later. This b eing

so

may

be

w ell t o a dd and

I

am

sure y ou will agree

tha t i t

must n ot b e supposed

that

t he re c an b e on ly o ne s or t of general statement which can be

made about

social phenomena

and t hat

others m ust be

wrong if that one is right. There is no pr r reason why these

theories p urp ortin g to exp lain p rimitive relig io n in terms

respectively of

ratiocination emotion

and

social function

should

not

all b e correct each sup plemen ting the o th ers

t ho ug h I do n ot be lie ve

that

they are. Interpretation can be

on different levels. Likewise there is n o reaso n why sev eral

different explanations of the same type o r o n the same level

should not a ll b e r ig ht

so

long as they do not contradict each

other for each may explain different features of t he s am e

phenomenon. In point

of f

act however I find all the theories

we shall examine tog ether n o more than plausible

and

even

as they have been propounded unacceptable in t hat they

contain contradictions

and

other logical inadequacies or in

that they cannot as stated be proved either true or false or

finally and most to the p oint in tha t ethnographic evidence

invalidates them.

A f ina l w or d: som e p eo pl e t od ay fi nd it embarrassing to

hear peoples described as primitives or natives and even

more

so

to hear

them

spoken of as savages. But I am some

times obliged to use the designations

ofmy

authors who wrote

in the robust language

of

a time wh en o ffen ce to the p eo ples

they wrote about could scarcely be given the good time

of

Victorian prosperity

and

progress and one

may

add smug

ness o ur po mp o fy esterd ay . But th e words are u sed by me

~ w h a t

e b e r ~ a value-free sense anathey are etym o=-

logically u n o b j e c t i o n a b l ~ e th e use of t he w or d

primitive to describe peoples living in small-scale societies

w it h a s im pl e m at er ia l c ul tu re and lacking literature is too

f ir ml y e st ab li she d to b e elimi;nated. T hi s

is

unfortunate

because

no

word has caused greater confusion

in

anthropo

logical writings as you will see for it c an have a logical

and a chronological sense and t he tw o senses ha ve some-

INTRODU TION

19


14/70

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

/

HE theory of President de Brosses, a contemporary

and correspondent of Voltaire, that religion originated

in fetishism, was accepted unt il the middle of last

century. The thesis, taken

up

by Comte,z was that fetishism,

. the worship, according to Portuguese sailors, of inanimate

things and

of

animals

by

the coastal Negroes of West Mrica,

developed into polytheism and polytheism into monotheism.

It

was replaced

by

theories, couched

in

intellectualist terms

and

under

the influence of the associationalist psychology of

the t ime, which may

be

designated as the ghost theory and

the soul theory, both taking

it

for granted

that

primitive

man

is

essentially rational, though his attempts to explain puzzling

phenomena are crude and fallacious.

But before these theories became generally accepted they

had to contest the field with others of the nature-myth school,

a contest all the more bitterly fought in that both were of the

same intellectualist genre. I discuss very briefly nature

myth account

of

the origin of religion first, partly because

it was first in time, and also because

what

happened later

was a reaction to animistic theories,nature mythology having

ceased, at any rate in this country, to have any following

and significance.

The

nat ll re-myth school was predominant ly a German

school, and

t

w mostly concerned with Indo-European

religions, its thesis being that the gods of antiquity, and by

implication gods anywhere and

at

all times, were no more

than personified

natural

phenomena : sun , moon, stars,

dawn, the spring renewal, mighty rivers, &c. The most

powerful representative of this school was Max Muller (son

Ch.

R.

de Brosses, u

Culle

des

dieux fttiches

au

parallete l anciennereligion

l Egypte

avec

la

religion

actuelle

la

Nigritie

17

6

0.

2 Comte, Cours philosophic positive 1908 edit., 52 -54:e les:on.

J

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES 21

of the romantic poet Wilhelm Muller), a

German

scholar

of

/

the solar-myth b r a n c l ~ ~ c h o o l ( the various branches did .

a good dealof wrangling among themselves), who spent most

of

his life

at

Oxford, where he was Professor and a Fellow

of

All Souls. He was a linguist of quite exceptional ability, one

of

the leading Sanskritists

of

his time,

and in

general a

man

of

great erudition; and he has been most unjustly decried. He

was

not

prepared to go

as

far

as

some of his more extreme

German colleagues,

not

just because

at

Oxford in those days

it was dangerous to be an agnostic, but from conviction, for

he was a pious and sentimental

Lutheran; but

he got fairly

near their position, and, by tacking and veering in his many

books to avoid it, he rendered his thought sometimes ambi-

guous and opaque.

In

his view, as I understand it, men have

always had

an

intuition of the divine, the idea of the Infi

nite his

word for

God deriving

from sensory experiences;

so we do not have to seek itssource in primitive revelation or

in

a religious instinct

or

faculty, as some people then did..

All human knowledge comes through

th e

senses,

that of

touch giving the sharpes t impression

of

reality,

and

all

reasoning is based

on

them, and this is true of religion also: )

nihil in fide quod non

ante

fuerit in sensu Now, things which are

intangible, like the sun and the sky, gave

men

the idea of the .

infinite and also furnished the materia l for deities. Max

Muller di d not wish to be understood as suggesting that /

rel igion began by men deifying

grand natural

objects,

but

rather

that these gave him a feeling of the infinite and also

served as symbols for it.

Mullerwas chiefly interested in the gods ofIndia and ofthe

classical world, though he tried his

hand

at

the interpreta-

[../

tion of some primitive material and certainly believed that

his explanations had general validity. His thesis was that the

infinite, once the idea had arisen, could only be thoughtofin /

metaphor and symbol, which could only

be

taken from what

seemed majestic in the known world, such as the heavenly

bodies, or rather their attributes. But these attributes then

lost their original metaphorical sense and achieved autonomy

by becoming personified as deities in their own right . The

nomina became numina So religions, of this sort

at

any rate,


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22

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES

might be described as a disease

of

language , a pithy but

unfortunate expression which later Muller tried to explain

away but never quite lived down.

It

follows, he held,

that

the only way we can discover the meaning

of

the religion

of

early

man

is by philological

and

etymological research,

which restores to the names of gods and the stories told about

them the ir or iginal sense. Thus , Apollo loved

Daphne;

Daphne fled before him and was changed into a laurel tree.

This legendmakes no sense till weknow

that

originallyApollo

was a solar deity, and Daphne, the Greek name for the

laurel, or rather the bay t ree, was the name for the dawn.

This tells us the originalmeaningof the myth: the sun chasing

away the dawn.

Muller deals with belief in the human soul and its ghostly

form in a similar manner.

When men

wished

to

express a

distinction between the body and something theyfelt in them

other

than

the body, the name

that

suggested itself was

breath, something immaterial

and

obviously connected with

life. Then this word psyche came to express the principle

of life, and then the soul, the mind, the sel After death the

psyche went into Hades, the place

of

the invisible. Once the

opposition of body to soul had thus been established in lan

guage and thought, philosophy began its work on i t, arid

spiritualistic and materialistic systems of philosophy arose;

and all this to put together again what language had severed.

So language exercises a tyranny over thought, and

thought

is always struggling against it,

bu t

in vain. Similarly, the

word for ghost originally meant breath, and the word for

shades (of the departed) meant shadows. They were at first

figurative expressions which eventually achieved concrete

ness.

There can be no doubt that Muller

and

his fellow nature

mythologists carried their theories to the point of absurdity;

he claimed that the siege of Troy was no more than a solar

myth: and to reduce. this sort

of

interpretation to farce,

someone, I believe, wrote a pamphlet inquiring whether Max

Muller himself was not a solar myth Leaving

out

of con

sideration the mistakes in classical scholarship we now known

to have been such,

it

is evident that, however ingenious

PSYCHOLOGICAL

THEORIES 23

explanations of the kindmight be, they were not , and could /

notbe, S ~ E . Q e d . . . b . a . d ~ ~ ~ ~ r i c a l evidence tocarry con-

viction, and could only be, at best,erudite-guesswork. I need

not recal l the charges brought against the nature mytholo

gists by their contemporaries, because although Max Muller,

their chief representative, for a time had some influence on

anthropological thought,

it

did

not

last,

and

Muller outlived

such influence as he

had

once had. Spencer and Tylor, the

latter strongly supported

in

this matter by his pupil Andrew

Lang, were hostile to nature-myth theories,

and

their advo

cacy

of

a different approach proved successful.

Herbert Spencer, from whom anthropology has t aken .

some of its most important methodological

< o n c e p ~ s

and

whom it has forgotten, devotes ala.fge paI'tof- his

h

Principles

Sociology

to a discussion of primitive beliefs, and

though his interpretation

of

them

is

similar to that

of

Sir

Edward Tylor and was published after Tylor s Primitive

Culture

his views were formulated long before his book

appeared, and were independently reachel. Primitive man,

h e says, is. r a i ( ) I l ~ ' and, given his small knowledge, his

inferences are reasonable,

if

weak. He sees that such pheno

mena as sun

and

moon, clouds

and

stars, come

and

go, and

this gives

him

the

of

duality,

of

visible and invisible

conditions, and this notion is strengthened by other observa-

tions,

fo r

example, of fossils, chick and egg, chrysalis

and

butterfly, for Spencer

had

got

it

into his head that

rude

peoples have no idea of natural explanation, as though they

could have conducted their various practical pursuits with-

out it And

if

other things could be dualities, why not man

himself? His shadow

and

his reflection

in

water also come

go. But it is ~ r e a m s which are real expe:iences to

prin:l.i= r

uve peoples, which chIefly gave man the Idea

of

his own

duality, and he identified the dream-self which wanders at \

n ight with the shadow-self wh ich appears

by

day.

This

idea of duality is fortified by experiences of various forms of

temporary insensibility, sleeping, swooning, catalepsy, and

the like, so

that

death itself comes to be thought of as only

a prolonged form

of

insensibility. Andif man has a double,

Spencer, op. cit., vol.

i.


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24

P S YC HOL OGI C AL THEORI ES

PSYCHOLOGICAL

THEORI ES

25

a sou l, by the same reasoning so mu st animals h av e o ne an d

also plants an d material objects.

/

Th e

origin of religion, however,

is

to be looked for

in

the

\. / belief.J:1 ~ o s t s ~ a t h e r t h a ~ i n

soul .

That the soul has a

temporary after-life

is

suggested by the ap pearance

of

the

dead

in

dreams,

so

long as t he d ea d a re r em em be re d;

an d

--the

first traceable conception

of

a supernatural being

is

that

_

of

a ghost. T hi s c on ce pt io n m us t be earlier

than that of

fetish, which implies the existence o f a n indwelling ghost or

spirit. Also, the id ea

of

ghosts

is

found everywhere, unlike

t hat of fetishes, which is indeed no t characteristic of very

primitive peoples. Th e idea of ghosts inevitably-Spencer s

favourite word-develops into t hat of gods, the g hosts of

remote ancestors

or of

superiQr persQns-becoming divinities

the doctrineof Euhemerism), and the food an d drink placed

on t he ir g ra ve s t o ple ase t he dead becoming sacrifices

an d

l ib atio ns to the gods to p rop itiate them. So h ~ c o n c l u d e s

that

a n ~ t r

..

worshipjs the-root

of

every religion _ -

ll

this

is

served up

in

inappropriat e terrrisDorrowed from

the physical sciences

an d in

a d ecid ed ly d id actic mann er.

Th e

argument

is

priori speculation, sprinkled with some

illustrations, an d is specious. It is a fine example of the intro

s ~ c t i o ~ i ~ p 8 C h o l o ~

or

i f I w er e a h or se , f al la Cy ;- to -

wlu Cl1I shall h av e to mak e frequ en t referen ce. If Spencer

were living in primitive conditions, those would, he assumed,

h av e b ee n t he steps by w hi ch he w ould ha ve r ea ch ed t he

beliefs which primitives hold. It does not seem to h av e oc

c ur re d to h im to ask hi ms el f how,

if

the ideas

of

soul

an d

ghost arose from such fallacioliSreasoning about clouds

an d

butterflies

an d

dreams

and

trances, the beliefs cou ld h av e

persisted throughout millennia

an d

coul d still be hel d by

millions

of

civilized people in his day

an d

ours.

T yl or s t he or y for w hi ch he owed a

debt

to Comte) of

, animism he-eoined the word-is v ery similar to-th.at of

/ -Spencer,-tho ug h, as t he w or d

anima

implies, he stresses the

~ idea of soul rather than ofgQ..9st. Some-ambigUity attaches-to

t h e ~ m a n i m i s m in anthropological writings, it being

sometimes employed in the sense of th e belief, ascribed to

Op cit. i. 440. -

primitive peoples, that no t only creatures bu t also inanimate /

objects have life an d personality, an d sometimes with the

further sense t ha t i n addition they have souls. Tylor s t ~ Q r y . _

covers both senses, bu t we are particularly intereste


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26 P S Y CH O L O G I CA L

T H E O R I E S

d ea d o r to dreams among primitive peoples, an d

that

the

differences need to be accounted for if 'obvious inference' is to

be accepted

as

a valid causal conclusion.1

That the of soul led to that of spirit is a very dubious

supposition. Both ideas are present among what were called

the lowest savages, who in evolutionary perspective were held

to

be

the nearest one could get to prehistoric

m an ; a nd

the

two conceptions are

no t

only different

bu t

o p p o s ~ _ d , spirit

being regarded

as

incorporeal, extraneous

i O I D . ~ ,

an d in

vasive. Indeed, Tylor, through failure to recognize a funda

mental

distinCtion between th e two.conceptions, made a

serious blunder iIi his represenfation

of

earlyHebraic thought,

as Dr. Snaith has pointed out.2 Also, it remains to be proved

that

the most primitive peoples think

that

creatures an d

material objects have souls like their own.

If

any peoples

ca n

be

said to

be

dominantly animistic,

in

Tylor's sense

of

the

word, they belong to

much

more advanced cultures, a fact

which, though it would have no historical significance for me,

would be highly damaging to the evolutionary argument;

as is also the fact

that

the conception oragod

ISI0111 l..Q-among

all the so-called lowest hunters

an d

collectors. Finally, we

ma y ask again how

it

is that,

if

religion is the product

of

so

elementary an illusion,

it

has displayed so great a continuity

an d persistence.

Tylor wished to show

that

primitive

rel. gio.g

was rational,

t h a L i L a r o s e - f r o m o b s e r v a J : i ( ) ~ ~ , howevcr lnadequate,

an d

from logical deductions from them, howeyer faulty; t ha t i t

constituted a-crude natural philosophy.,In his treatment of

rn,ag which he distinguished from religion rather for con-

'venlence

of

exposition

than on

grounds

of

aetiology

or

validity,

he

likewise stressed the rational element

i n w ha t

he

called 'this farrago

of

nonsense'.

It

also

is

based on genuine

observation, an d

rests further

on

classification

of

similarities,

the first essential process i n h um an knowledge. Where the

magician goes wrong is injnferring that because things are

alike they have a mystical link between them, thus mistaking

I

J. R. Swanton,

Three

Factors

in

Primitive Religion',

merican nthropolo-

gist

N.S.

xxvi (1924), 35

8

-65.

2

N. H. Snaith, h

Distinctive Ideas the Old Testament

1944-, p. 14

8

.

P S Y CH O L O G I CA L

T H E O R I E S

27

an

ideal connexion for a rea l one, a subjective one for a n ~

objective one. And

i

we ask how peoples who exploit nature

an d organize their social life so well make such mistakes, the

answer is

that

they have very good reasons for not perceiving

the futility

of

their magic. Nature,

or

trickeryon the part

of

the

magician, often brings about

what

the magic is supposed to

achieve;

an d

ifit

fails to achieve its purpose,

that

is

rationally

explained

by

neglect

of

some prescription, or

by

the fact

that

some prohibition has been ignored

or

some hostile force

has impeded it. Also, there is plasticity about judgements of

success an d failure, an d people everywhere find i t h ar d to

appreciate evidence, especially when the weight of authority

induces acceptance of what confirms, an d rejection

of

what

contradicts, a belie Here Tylor's observations are borne ou t

by ethnological evidence.

I have touched briefly on Tylor's discussions

of

magic

partly

as a ~ Q _ e _ r

illustration

of

intellectualist i n t e r p r e t ~ t ( m

an d partly

b e c ~ i n e a : a s

me--straigE:t to aiCestlmation

of

~ r < l : ~ e r contribution to our subJect. F l : ~ ~ E j , I

suppose, th';oest-known name in anthropology, an d we owe

much to h im an d to Spencer an d Tylor. Th e whole

of

The

Golden Bough a workof immense industry an d erudition, is de-

voted to prirp.itive superstitions. But it cannot be said that he

added much ofvalue- toTylor s theory of religion; rather that . /

he introduced some ~ 0 n f u s i o n into it i n t he form

of

two n e ~ f

suppositions, th e one pseudo-historical

an d

the otherpsycho

logicaL According to him, mankind everywhere, an d sooner

or

later, passes through

t 1 : l r . ~ e

t . . g ~ . L ) . f . i t e l l ~ _ c l l l . 1 develop-

ment, from magic

to

religion,

an d

from religion to science,

v

a scheme he

ma y

have taken over from Comte's--phases, the

theological, the metaphysical,

a n d t he p os it iv e t ho ug h t he

correspondence is far from an exact one. Other writers of

the period, for example, King ]evons and Lubbock, and, as

we shall see, in a certain way

of

viewing the matter, Marett,

Preuss,

an d

the writers

of

the nnieSociologique school as well,

also believed

that

magic preceded religion. Eventually, says

Frazer, the shrewder intelligences probably discovered

that

Ina-gic did not really achieve its ends, but, still being unable

to overcome their difficulties

by

empirical means

an d

to face


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28

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L

T H E O R I E S

their crises through a refinedphilosophy, theyfellinto another

, i llusion, that there were spiritual beings who could aid them.

In

course of time the shrewder intelligences saw that spirits

were equally bogus,

an

enlightenment which heralded the

dawn

of

e x p ~ i m e n t l science. Th e arguments in support

of

this thesis were, to say the least, trivial, a nd i t was ethnologi

cally most vulnerable.

In

particular, the conclusions based

on

Australian data were wide of the mark, and , since the

Australians were introduced into the argument to show

that

the s impler the cul ture, the more the magic an d the less the

religion, it is pertinent to note that hunting an d collecting

peoples, including many Australian tribes, aI.limistic

an d theistic beliefs an d cults. It

is

also evident that the

variety, an d

therefore volume,

of

magic in their cultures is

, likely t o be less,

as

indeed it is, thanin cultures technologically

more advanced: there cannot, for instance, be agricultural

magic or magic

of

iron-working in the absence

of

cultivated

plants a nd o fmetals. No one accepts Frazer's theory of stages

today.

Th e

psychological part of his thesis was to oppose magic

an d

science to rel igion, the first two postu lating a world

subject to invariable natural laws,

an

idea he shared with

Jevons,r an d the las t a world in which events depend on the

caprice of spirits. Consequently, while the magician an d

th e scientist, strangeJ.i edfeliows, perform their operations

with quiet confidence:\the priest performs his in fear

an d

trembling. So psychologically science an d magic are a l ike _

-

though one IiappelIS

to

be

f ~ l s e

an d the other_ l ' l l ~ ~ J ' l l i s

~ a n a l o g y - b e t w . . e ~ , L . s , ~ ~ e I l c ~ - a n d m a g i c - ~ 6 t d S - 6 I l T y in

so far

as-

both

are techniques,

an d

few anthropologists have regarded

it

/-as other

than

superficial. Frazer here

made

the same mistake

in method as Levy-Bruhl was to make, in comparing modern

science with primitive magic instead of comparing empirical

an d magical techniques in the same cultural conditions.

However, no t all that Frazer wrote about magic an d reli

e / / gion was chaff. There was some grain.

Fo r

example, he was

able in his painstaking way to demonstrate what Condorcet

an d others ha d merely asserted, how frequently among the

I F.

B. Jevons, Report on Greek Mythology', Folk Lore ii 2

r89r),

220 fr.

P S Y C H O L O G I C A L T H E O R I E S

29

simpler peoples

of

the wm-Id rulers are m a g i c i l . n . L ~ n d Rriests. c/

Then, although he added f lttle to Tylor 's explanationof

magic as misapplication

of

association

of

ideas, he provided

some useful classificatory terms.. showing

that

these associa

tions are

of

two types, those of similarity an d those

of

contact, ~

homoeopathic or imitative magic an d contagious magic.

He

did not , however, go further

than

to show

that

in

magical

beliefs

an d

rites we can discern certain elementary sensations.

Neither Tylor nor Fraierexplained why eople in their magicJ

iiusta e, as t ey supp'ose ,

l ea l

conneXlOns or rea ones

when they do ot

do

so in tlieirother a c t l ~ t i e s . Moreover, it is

- no t

toned

that they do so. Th e error here was i n n ot recog

~ t the associations are SOCIal a nd n ot psychologltal

s t e r e o t y ~ [ C f t J i ~ I E i ~ y O C c } 1 , ~ ~ t : l 1 e ~ ~ 1 9 r : ~ Q . . I , 1 L ~ h e n

e ~ d

r n ~ s R e ~ l ~ c ritual s i t u C 1 ? ( ) ~ s ~ : ~ h i c h a r e a l ~ o ? f g ~ t ~ d l i ~ ~ < ? . 1 - , /

as

I have-argued elsewliere.

r

,

About ~ l l , . : t h ~ s e broadly speaking intellectualist,theoriss we

must say

that,

they cannot be refuted, they also canriot be

sustained, and for the simple reason

that

there is no evidence

about how religious beliefs originated. The:,_eyo utionary

s t a g e s ~ j : h ~ i r sponsors attempted to c,onstruct, as a means

, of supplyln.g the-miss ing 'eVidence, ma y have ha d logical

consistency, bu t they ha d no historicalvalue. However,

we mus t discard the e ~ i (or rather'

p ~ g ' ~ , s i Q n i s t )

assumptions an d judgements, or give them the s tatus of

rather vague hypotheses, we

ma y

still retain much

o f w h at

claimed about the essential rationality

of

primitive

peoples.-They

ma y

not have reached their beliefs

in

the

manner these Writers supposed,

bu t

even they did not, the

- element

of

rationality

is

still always there,

in

spite ofobserva-

--tions being inadequate, inferences faulty, an d conclusions

wrong.

T l : l ~ J ~ _ e l i e f s _ a r . e ~ l w a ~ . o h e r e n t ,

and up to a point

they can be critical

an d

s e p t l ~ d even experimental,

within the system

of

their beliefs and i n its idiom; an d their

thought is therefore intelligible to anyone who cares to learn

their language

an d

study their way

of

life.

Th e

animistic theory

in

various fonns remained for many

I

Th e Intellectualist (English) Interpretation

of

Magic', Bulletin

the

Faculty

rts

Egyptian University (Cairo), i, pt. 2 (r933), 282-3

II


19/70

30 PSYCHQLOGICAL THEORIES

years unchallenged, and i t left its mark on all the anthropo

logical literature of the day, as, to give a single example,

in Dorman's comprehensive account of the religion of the

American Indians, where every belief totemism sorcery,

fetishism is explained in animistic terms. But voices began

to be raised in protest, both wi th regard to the or igin

of

religion

and

to the order

of

its development.

Before we consider what they had to say, it should

be

remarked that the critics had two advantages their prede

cessors lacked. Associationist psychology, which was more or

less

a mechanistic theory of sensation, was giving to ex

perimental psychology, under the influenceof which anthro

pologists were able, though in a rather common-sense way

and in their everyday meanings , to make use of its terms,

and

we then hear

less

of the cognitive and JIlore

of

the affec

tive and conative functions, the orectiveelements, of the

mind;

of

instincts, emotions, sentiments, and later,

under

the

influence of psycho-analysis, of complexes, inhibitions, pro

jection, c.; and Gestalt psychology and the psychology of

crowds were also to leave the ir mark. But what was more

important

was

the

great advance in ethnography in the last

decades of the nineteenth century:' ana- early in the present

century. This provided the later writers with

an

abundance

of information and ofbetter quality: such researches

as

those

of Fison, Howitt, and Spencer and Gillen for the Australian

aboriginals; Tregear for theMaoris; Codrington,

Haddon

and

Seligman for the Melanesians; Nieuwenhuis, Kruijt, Wilken,

Snuck Hurgronje, and

Skeat

and

Blagden for the peoples

01

Indonesia; Man for the Andaman Islanders; 1m Thurn and

von den Steinen for the Amerindians; Boasfor

the

Eskimoes;

and in

Africa Macdonald, Kidd,

Mary

Kingsley,

Junod

Ellis, Dennet,

and

others.

It will have been noted

that in

one respect Frazer differed

radically from Tylor, in claim

that

religion-was preceded

by a magical phase. Other writers took the same view. An

American, John H. King, published in 89 two volumes

entitled The Supernatural: its Origin Nature and Evolution

They made

little impression

in

the climate of animism then

prevailing, and

had

fallen into oblivion till resuscitated by

PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES 3

Wilhelm Schmidt.

As

intellectualist

and

evolutionist as

others

of

the time, h e was of the opinion that the ideas

of

E. E. Evans-Pritchard-Theories of Primitive Religion (1965)

Documents

Transcript of E. E. Evans-Pritchard-Theories of Primitive Religion (1965)