ly a
force, it is also an action, a quality, a state, at once a substantive,
an adjective, and a verb. It is very closely neighboured by the idea
of sanctity. Things that have mana are tabu. Like orenda it manifests
itself in noises, but specially mysterious ones, it is mana that is
rustling in the trees. Mana is highly contagious, it can pass from a
holy stone to a man or even to his shadow if it cross the stone. "All
Melanesian religion," Dr Codrington says, "consists in getting mana
for oneself or getting it used for one's benefit." (Codrington, "The
Melanesians", page 120, Oxford, 1891.)

Specially instructive is a word in use among the Omaka (See Prof.
Haddon, "Magic and Fetishism", page 60, London, 1906. Dr Vierkandt
("Globus", July, 1907, page 41) thinks that "Fernzauber" is a later
development from Nahzauber.), wazhin-dhedhe, "directive energy, to
send." This word means roughly what we should call telepathy, sending
out your thought or will-power to influence another and affect his
action. Here we seem to get light on what has always been a puzzle, the
belief in magic exercised at a distance. For the savage will, distance
is practically non-existent, his intense desire feels itself as
non-spatial. (This notion of mana, orenda, wazhin-dhedhe and the like
lives on among civilised peoples in such words as the Vedic brahman in
the neuter, familiar to us in its masculine form Brahman. The neuter,
brahman, means magic power of a rite, a rite itself, formula, charm,
also first principle, essence of the universe. It is own cousin to the
Greek dunamis and phusis. See MM. Hubert et Mauss, "Theorie generale de
la Magie", page 117, in "L'Annee Sociologique", VII.)

Through the examination of primitive ritual we have at last got at one
tangible, substantial factor in religion, a real live experience, the
sense, that is, of will, desire, power actually experienced in person
by the individual, and by him projected, extended into the rest of the
world.

At this stage it may fairly be asked, though the question cannot with
any certainty be answered, "at what point in the evolution of man does
this religious experience come in?"

So long as an organism reacts immediately to outside stimulus, with a
certainty and conformity that is almost chemical, there is, it would
seem, no place, no possibility for magical experience. But when the
germ appears of an intellect that can foresee an end not immediately
realised, or rather when