Miscellaneous Abstracts

Read, Carveth. The Relations between Magic and Animism. British Journal of Psychology, 3, 1916, p. 285.

This paper takes up first the question of the priority of magic or animism. According to Wundt the idea of the soul has 3 principal sources, first, immediate sensory experiences (the “body-soul”); second, the external soul, derived from the cessation of the body's living functions with the last breath, and third, the shadow-soul derived from dreams and visions. Magic he considers is derivative and secondary, and animism is wholly independent of magic. A talisman, originally owing its power to an indwelling spirit, may degenerate into a magieal object.

It is not, however, necessary to infer that animism preceded magic. There are conditions that may give rise independently to a belief in magic. The author assigns a low degree of probability to the view that magic precedes animism, but a much higher one to its precedence over religion. He questions Frazeir's views on how religion superseded magic. Frazer's view is, that as the inefficiency of magic became manifest through experience, religion was adopted as more consistent with it. “The wizard inferred that if the great world went on its way without the help of him or his fellows, it must surely be because there were other beings like himself but far stronger, who, unseen themselves, directed its course. The distinction between magic and religion is first that religion involves appeal to the supernatural which is absent in magic; but Frazer has shown himself that no amount of experience can discredit magic, generally, in untutored minds; and, moreover, his view is based on the supposition that experience showed the worship of spirit in prayer and sacrifice to be more efficacious than magic in obtaining human ends. Is there any reason to think this ever happened? Must we not rather say that, whether one relies on magic or religion, experience of failure counts for almost nothing?

But the impersonality of pure magic sets