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.

    16/256 (page 4)
    Nagpur their “ sacred groves are the abode of equally indeterminate things, represented by no symbols and of whose form and function no one can give an intelligible account. They have not yet been clothed with individual attributes; they linger on as survivals of the impersonal stage of religion.” 1 Cognate examples abound; here, .IHlMI>lr> »M IHI<BIII<W<III i *****m■ ' ■“ 'U passing from India to Africa, it suffices to quote one given by Mr. Hollis in his book on The Masai. He says that in their word en-gai we have that which expresses “ the primitive and undeveloped religious sentiment where the personality-of the god is hardly separated from striking natural phenomena.” 2 On the same plane is the “ un¬ seen power of the m^enT^Koman cults . . . seated in, often unnamed, and visible only in the sense of being, or^^uxjSQjme sense symbolized by, tree or stone or animal.3 In his Religion of Numa Mr. Carter says that “it required centuries to _Jim r - educate the Roman into the conception of per^ sonal, individual gods.”4 “ The idea of the supernatural,” says M. Emile Durkheim, “ as we understand it, dates only from to-day.”5 It could arise only after belief in a natural, unbroken order of things was established, and 1 People of India, p. 215, by Sir H. Risley. 2 p. xix. 3 The Roman Festivals, p. 337, by W. Warde Fowler. 4 p. 70. 6 Elementary Forms of the Religious Lifey p. 26.