philosophy a n d ethical by the tradition of the world religions, whereas to t h e primitive it is a spiritual chaos in which good a n d evil, high a n d low, rational a n d irrational elements a r e confusedly mingled. Writers on primitive religion have continually gone astray through their attempts to reduce the spiritual world of the primitive to a single principle, to find a single cause from which the whole development m a y be explained a n d rendered intelligible. T h u s T y l o r finds t h e key in t h e belief in ghosts, D u r k h e i m in the theory of an impersonal mana which is t h e exteriorisation of the collective m i n d , a n d Frazer in the technique of magic.
But in reality there is no single aspect of primitive religion t h a t can be isolated a n d regarded as the origin of all the rest. T h e spiritual world of the primitive is far less unified t h a n t h a t of civilised m a n . H i g h gods, n a t u r e spirits, the ghosts of the dead, malevolent demons, a n d impersonal supernatural forces a n d substances m a y all co-exist in it without forming any kind of spiritual system or hierarchy. Every primitive culture will tend to lay the religious emphasis on some particular point.
In Central Africa witchcraft a n d the cult of ghosts m a y overshadow everything else ; a m o n g the hunters of N o r t h America the emphasis m a y be laid on the visionary experience of the 37
CHRISTIANITY AND T H E N E W AGE
individual, and the cult of animal guardians ; and among the Hamitic peoples the sky-god takes the foremost place. But it is dangerous to conclude that the point on which attention is focussed is the whole field of consciousness.
The high gods are often conceived as too far from man to pay much attention to his doings, and it is lesser powers—the spirits of the field and the forest, or the ghosts of the dead—who come into closest relation with human life, and whose malevolence is most to be feared.
Consequently primitive religion is apt to appear wholly utilitarian and concerned with purely material ends. But here also the confusion of primitive thought is apt to mislead us.
The ethical aspect of religion is not consciously recognised and cultivated as it is by civilised man, but it is none the less present in an obscure way. Primitive religion is essentially an attempt to bring man’s life into relation with, and under the sanctions of, that other world of mysterious and sacred powers, whose action is always conceived as the ultimate and fundamental law of life. Moreover, the sense of sin and of the need for purification or catharsis is very real to primitive man. No doubt sin appears to him as a kind of physical contagion that seems to us of little moral value. Nevertheless, as we can see from 38