rance, but in fact and
fundamentally it remains the same thing. In all the lower forms of
religion, and in most of the higher, there are practices which are by
common consent and beyond doubt magical. This indisputable fact lends
colour to the view that religion was in its origin nothing but magic,
and that religion is, to those who can see the facts as they are,
nothing but magic to this day: the magician was but a priest, and the
priest, claiming superhuman power, is but a magician still. Prayers were
at first but spells, and even now are supposed, by simple repetition, to
produce their effects.

If against this view it be objected that one of the most constant facts
in the history of all religions, from the lowest to the highest, is that
religion has at all times carried on war against sorcery, witchcraft,
and magic, that in the lowest stages of man's evolution witches have
been 'smelt out' by the witch-finder, and that in the higher stages of
civilization witches have been persecuted, tortured, and burnt, the
reply made to the objection is that the war against witchcraft and magic
is due simply to the jealousy and resentment which regular practitioners
of any art, e.g., medicine, have ever displayed and do still display
towards irregular, unprofessional practitioners. This reply, however, is
now generally admitted to be one which it is impossible to accept in
the case of religion for the simple reason that it does not account for
the facts. The plain fact which wrecks this attempted explanation is
that magic is punished and witches are burnt not because witch-finders
or priests are jealous of them, but because the community dreads them
and feels their very existence to be a danger. It is the community which
feels the world of difference there is between magic and religion.

The attraction of the view that religion is but magic under another
name, that prayers are to the end but spells, that 'priest' is but
'magician' written differently, is that it is a simplicist theory. It
simplifies things. It exhibits religion as evolved out of magic and as
containing at the end nothing more or other than was present at the
beginning in magic. It is but a variant of the pre-formation theory of
the evolution of religion. In fine, the notion that in magic we have
religion pre-formed is the counterpart of the idea that we can find
religion pre-formed in totemism. In both cases we secure continuity in
the process of evolution appar