en
attempted by means of friendly social intercourse with supernatural
Powers, and by studying their methods of procedure with a view to
applying these methods and thereby gaining beneficial results. Friendly
social intercourse is practical religion in the higher sense of that
term. The application and use of superhuman procedures takes two lines
of action: the powers of superhuman agents may be appropriated and used
independently of them, or the object may be simply to discover their
will in order to be guided by it. The first of these lines is magic, the
second is divination. While the two have in common the frank and
independent employment of the supernatural for the bettering of human
life, their conceptions and modes of procedure differ in certain
respects, and they may be considered separately.

MAGIC[1536]

+883+. The perils and problems of savage life, more acute in certain
directions than those that confront the civilized man, demand constant
vigilance, careful investigation, and prompt action. So far as familiar
and tangible enemies (beasts and men) are concerned, common sense has
devised methods of defense, and ordinary prudence has suggested means of
providing against excessive heat or cold and of procuring food. But
there are dangers and ills that in the savage view cannot be referred
to such sources, but must be held to be caused by intangible, invisible
forces in the world, against which it is man's business to guard
himself. He must learn what they are and how to thwart or use them as
circumstances may require. They could be studied only in their deeds,
and this study involves man in the investigation of the law of cause and
effect. The only visible bond between phenomena is that of sequence, and
on sequence the savage bases his science of causes--that which precedes
is cause, that which follows is effect. The agencies he recognizes are
spirits, gods, the force resident in things (mana), and human beings who
are able to use this force.

+884+. But belief in such agencies would be useless to man unless he
also believed that he could somehow determine their actions, and belief
in the possibility of determining these appears to have come to him
through his theory of natural law. The reasoning of savages on this
point has not been recorded by them, but the character of their known
procedures leads us to suppose that they have a sense of a law governing
the actions of superhuman Powers. Being conscious t