Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd.

  • Clodd, Edward, 1840-1930.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Magic in names and in other things / by Edward Clodd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    In agreement with this, Sir James Frazer says that 44 the analogy between the magical and the scientific conceptions of the world is close. In both of them the succession of events is perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immut¬ able laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice, of chance, and of accident are banished from the course of nature.” 1 To this an opposite school replies that the theory assumes a higher stage of mentality than savage races have reached. They are unable to conceive of constant relations between cause and effect. The how and why of things is a late conception in human develop- ment. What appears to rule the life of man at his lowest, and to persist in often unsuspected form throughout his history, is the sense of a vague, impersonal, ever-acting, universally- diffused power which, borrowing the word for it common to the whole Pacific, is called mana.2 To quote from the classical work on the subject, 44 Mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. It works to affect everything which is beyond the ordinary power of men, outside the common processes of nature, it is present in the atmosphere of life, attaches 1 The Golden Bough*, 44 The Magic Art,” Vol. I. p. 220, 2 Art. 44 Mana,” Hastings’s Ency. Religion and Ethics, Vol. VIII. pp. 375-380.