higher level of culture, but an idea or blend of ideas familiar to primitive thought. An important consequence of thus giving the study of primitive religion the wide scope of a comparative hierology is that magic is no longer divorced from religion, since the sacred will now be found to be coextensive with the magico-religious, that largely undifferentiated plasm out of which religion and magic slowly take separate shape as society comes more and more to contrast legitimate with illicit modes of dealing with the sacred. We may define, then, the religious object as the sacred, and the corresponding religious attitude as consisting in such manifestation of feeling, thought and action in regard to the sacred as is held to conduce to the welfare of the community or to that of individuals considered as members of the community.
Aspects of the Nature of the Sacred.—To exhibit the general character of the sacred as it exists for primitive religion it is simplest to take stock of various aspects recognized by primitive thought as expressed in language. If some, and not the least essential, of these aspects are quasi-negative, it must be remembered that negations—witness the Unseen, the Unknown, the Infinite of a more advanced theology—are well adapted to supply that mystery on which the religious consciousness feeds with the slight basis of conceptual support it needs. (1) The sacred as the forbidden. The primitive notion that perhaps comes nearest to our “sacred,” whilst it immediately underlies the meanings of the Latin sacer and sanctus, is that of a taboo, a Polynesian term for which equivalents can be quoted from most savage vocabularies. The root idea seems to be that something is marked off as to be shunned, with the added hint of a mystic sanction or penalty enforcing the avoidance. Two derivative senses of a more positive import call for special notice. On the one hand, since that which is tabooed is held to punish the taboo-breaker by a sort of mystic infection, taboo comes to stand for uncleanness and sin. On the other hand, since the isolation of the sacred, even when originally conceived in the interest of the profane, may be interpreted as self-protection on the part of the sacred as against defiling contact, taboo takes on the connotation of ascetic virtue, purity, devotion, dignity and blessedness. Primary and secondary senses of the term between them cover so much ground that it is not surprising to find taboo used in Polynesia as a name for the whole system of religion, founded as it largely is on prohibitions and abstinences. (2) The sacred as the mysterious. Another quasi-negative notion of more restricted distribution is that of the mysterious or strange, as we have it expressed, for example, in the Siouan wakan, though possibly this is a derivative meaning. Meanwhile, it is certain that what is strange, new or portentous is regularly treated by all savages as sacred. (3) The sacred as the secret. The literal sense of the term churinga, applied by the Central Australians to their sacred objects, and likewise used more abstractly to denote mystic power, as when a man is said to be “full of churinga,” is “secret,” and is symptomatic of the esotericism that is a striking mark of Australian, and indeed of all primitive, religion, with its insistence on initiation, its exclusion of women, and its strictly enforced reticence concerning traditional lore and proceedings. (4) The sacred as the potent. Passing on to positive conceptions of the sacred, perhaps the most fundamental is that which identifies the efficacy of sacredness with such mystic or magical power as is signified by the mana of the Pacific or orenda of the Hurons, terms for which analogies are forthcoming on all sides. Of mana Dr R. H. Codrington in The Melanesians, 119 n., writes: “It essentially belongs to personal beings to originate it, though it may act through the medium of water, or a stone, or a bone. All Melanesian religion consists . . . in getting this mana for oneself, or getting it used for one's benefit.” E. Tregear's Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary shows how the word and its derivatives are used to express thought, memory, emotion, desire, will—in short, psychic energy of all kinds. It also stands for the vehicle of the magician's energy—the spell; which would seem likewise to be a meaning, perhaps the root-meaning, of orenda (cf. J. N. B. Hewitt, American Anthropologist, N.S., iv. 40). Whereas everything, perhaps, has some share of indwelling potency, whatever is sacred manifests this potency in an extraordinary degree, as typically the wonder-working leader of society, whose mana consists in his cunning and luck together. Altogether, in mana we have what is par excellence the primitive religious idea in its positive aspect, taboo representing its negative side, since whatever has mana is taboo, and whatever, is taboo has mana. (5) The sacred as the animate. The term “animism,” which embodies Tylor's classical theory of primitive religion, is unfortunately somewhat ambiguous. If we take it strictly to mean the belief in ghosts or spirits having the “vaporous materiality” proper to the objects of dream or hallucination, it is certain that the agency of such phantasms is not the sole cause to which all mystic happenings are referred (though ghosts and spirits are everywhere believed in, and appear to be endowed with greater predominance as religious synthesis advances amongst primitive peoples). Thus there is good evidence to show that many of the early gods, notably those that are held to be especially well disposed to man, are conceived rather in the shape of magnified non-natural men dwelling somewhere apart, such as the Munganngaur of the Kurnai of S.E. Australia (cf. A. Lang, The Making of Religion², x. sqq.). Such anthropomorphism is with difficulty reduced to the Tylorian animism. The term, however, will have to be used still more vaguely, if it is to cover all attribution of personality, will or vitality. This can be more simply brought under the notion of mana. Meanwhile, since quasi-mechanical means are freely resorted to in dealing with the sacred, as when a Maori chief snuffs up the sanctity his fingers have acquired by touching his own sacred head that he may restore the virtue to the part whence it was taken (R. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, 165), or when uncleanness is removed as if it were a physical secretion by washing, wiping and so forth, it is hard to say whether what we should now call a “material” nature is not ascribed to the sacred, more especially when its transmissibility after the manner of a contagion is the trait that holds the attention. It is possible, however, that the savage always distinguishes in a dim way between the material medium and the indwelling principle of vital energy, examples of a pure fetishism, in the sense of the cult of the purely material, recognized as such, being hard to find. (6) The sacred as the ancient. The prominence of the notion of the Alcheringa “dream time,” or sacred past, in Central Australian religion illustrates the essential connexion perceived by the savage to lie between the sacred and the traditional. Ritualistic conservatism may be instanced as a practical outcome of this feeling. Another development is ancestor-worship, the organized cult of ancestors marking, however, a certain stage of advance beyond the very primitive, though the dead are always sacred and have mana which the living may exploit for their own advantage.
The Activity of the Sacred.—The foregoing views of the sacred, though starting from distinct conceptions, converge in a single complex notion, as may be seen from the many-sided sense borne by such a term as wakan, which may stand not only for “mystery,” but also for “power, sacred, ancient, grandeur, animate, immortal” (W. J. McGee, 15th Report of U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, 182). The reason for this convergence is that, whereas there is found great difficulty in characterizing the elusive nature of the sacred, its mode of manifesting itself is recognized to be much the same in all its phases. Uniform characteristics are the fecundity, ambiguity, relativity and transmissibility of its activity. (1) Fecundity. The mystic potency of the sacred is no fixed quantity, but is big with possibilities of all sorts. The same sacred person, object, act, will suffice for a variety of purposes. Even where a piece of sympathetic magic appears to promise definite results, or when a departmental god is recognized, there would seem to be room left for a more or less indefinite expectancy. It must be remembered that the meaning of a rite is for the most part obscure
