The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett.

  • Robert Ranulph Marett
Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The threshold of religion / by R.R. Marett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    thunderstorms, eclipses, eruptions, and the like, are eminently calculated to awake in him an awe that I believe to be specifically religious both in its essence and in its fruits, whether animism have, or have not, succeeded in imposing its distinctive colour upon it. Thus, when a thunderstorm is seen approaching in South Africa, a Kaffir village, led by its medicine- man, will rush to the nearest hill and yell at the hurricane to divert it from its course.1 Here we have awe finding vent in what on the face of it may be no more than a simple straightforward act of per- sonification. It is animism in the loose sense of some writers, or, as I propose to call it, animalism : but it is not animism in the strict scientific sense that im- plies the attribution, not merely of personality and will, but of “ soul ” or “ spirit,” to the storm. The next case is but slightly different. The Point Barrow natives, believing the Aurora Borealis to do them harm by striking them at the back of the neck, brandish knives and throw filth at it to drive it away.2 Now I doubt if we need suppose animism to be latent here any more than in the African example. Never- theless the association of the Aurora’s banefulness with a particular malady would naturally pave the way towards it, whilst the precautionary measures are exactly such as would be used against spirits. The following case is more dubious. When a glacier in Alaska threatened to swallow up a valuable fishing stream, two slaves were killed in order to 1 Macdonald, J. A. /., xix. 283. 2 Murdoch, Point Barrow Expedition, 432. *4
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