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2. The Occasional Expulsion of Evils
WE can therefore understand why those general clearances of evil, to
which from time to time the savage resorts, should commonly take the
form of a forcible expulsion of devils. In these evil spirits
primitive man sees the cause of many if not of most of his troubles,
and he fancies that if he can only deliver himself from them, things
will go better with him. The public attempts to expel the
accumulated ills of a whole community may be divided into two
classes, according as the expelled evils are immaterial and
invisible or are embodied in a material vehicle or scape-goat. The
former may be called the direct or immediate expulsion of evils; the
latter the indirect or mediate expulsion, or the expulsion by
scapegoat. We begin with examples of the former.
In the island of Rook, between New Guinea and New Britain, when any
misfortune has happened, all the people run together, scream, curse,
howl, and beat the air with sticks to drive away the devil, who is
supposed to be the author of the mishap.


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