The conclusion which we have thus reached deductively from a
consideration of the fundamental ideas of magic and religion is
confirmed inductively by the observation that among the aborigines
of Australia, the rudest savages as to whom we possess accurate
information, magic is universally practised, whereas religion in the
sense of a propitiation or conciliation of the higher powers seems
to be nearly unknown. Roughly speaking, all men in Australia are
magicians, but not one is a priest; everybody fancies he can
influence his fellows or the course of nature by sympathetic magic,
but nobody dreams of propitiating gods by prayer and sacrifice.
But if in the most backward state of human society now known to us
we find magic thus conspicuously present and religion conspicuously
absent, may we not reasonably conjecture that the civilised races of
the world have also at some period of their history passed through a
similar intellectual phase, that they attempted to force the great
powers of nature to do their pleasure before they thought of
courting their favour by offerings and prayer--in short that, just
as on the material side of human culture there has everywhere been
an Age of Stone, so on the intellectual side there has everywhere
been an Age of Magic? There are reasons for answering this question
in the affirmative.
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