an incantation—­is that religion?  Or, worse still, suppose that no sort of personal god can be discovered at the back of the performance—­which consists, let us say, as amongst the central Australians, in solemnly rubbing a bull-roarer on the stomach, so that its mystic virtues may cause the man to become “good” and “glad” and “strong” (for that is his own way of describing the spiritual effects)—­is that religion, in any sense that can link it historically with, say, the Christian type of religion?

No, say some, these low-class dealings with the unseen are magic, not religion.  The rude folk in question do not go the right way about putting themselves into touch with the unseen.  They try to put pressure on the unseen, to control it.  They ought to conciliate it, by bowing to its will.  Their methods may be earnest, but they are not propitiatory.  There is too much “My will be done” about it all.

Unfortunately, two can play at this game of ex-parte definition.  The more unsympathetic type of historian, relentlessly pursuing the clue afforded by this distinction between control and conciliation, professes himself able to discover plenty of magic even in the higher forms of religion.  The rite as such—­say, churchgoing as such—­appears to be reckoned by some of the devout as not without a certain intrinsic efficacy.  “Very well,” says this school, “then a good deal of average Christianity is magic.”

My own view, then, is that this distinction will only lead us into trouble.  And, to my mind, it adds to the confusion if it be further laid down, as some would do, that this sort of dealing with the unseen which, on the face of it, and according to our notions, seems rather mechanical (being, as it were, an effort to get a hold on some hidden force) is so far from being akin to religion that its true affinity is with natural science.  The natural science of to-day, I quite admit, has in part evolved out of experiments with the occult; just as law, fine art, and almost every other one of our higher interests have likewise done.  But just so long and so far as it was occult science, I would maintain, it was not natural science at all, but, as it were, rather supernatural science.  Besides, much of our natural science has grown up out of straightforward attempts to carry out mechanical work on industrial lines—­to smelt iron, let us say; but since then, as now, there were numerous trade-secrets, an atmosphere of mystery was apt to surround the undertaking, which helped to give it the air of a trafficking with the uncanny.  But because science then, as even now sometimes, was thought by the ignorant to be somehow closely associated with all the powers of evil, it does not follow that then or now the true affinity of science must be with the devil.

Magic and religion, according to the view I would support, belong to the same department of human experience—­one of the two great departments, the two worlds, one might almost call them, into which human experience, throughout its whole history, has been divided.  Together they belong to the supernormal world, the x-region of experience, the region of mental twilight.