Man and His Superstitions [antikvár]

PREFACE TO MAN AND HIS SUPERSTITIONS This volume is a corrected impression of the last seven chapters of The Origin of Man and of His Superstitions, published in 1920; and the first two chapters of that work (much enlarged and rearranged) are now issued separately in a new edition, as The Origin of Man. The connection between the earlier and later chapters of the work as formerly published is that the origin of Man as we know him, Hving according to definite customs under some sort of government, cannot be understood until we know not only how he came to exist in the animal world, but also what induced him to observe customs and to submit to the decisions of some men in each tribe as to what were the customs and what the penalties for breaking them. The explanation of this essential characteristic of mankind everywhere is that at first men were sociable because they lived by hunting as a pack, and as a pack they had their customs and leaders determined by personal superiority; but that when the time came (as it always did come) when hunting was no longer the chief means of livelihood, or when by the acquisition of effective weapons the pack was no longer necessary to good success in hunting, a group of men and women was kept together (when it was kept together) by belief in the magical powers of some of their number (generally elders), giving them a reputation for wisdom and power much in excess of their merit, and enabling them to enforce the group's customs and direct its movements. I say "when the group kept together," for conceivably it often broke up and was lost. But with those who did keep together and maintained the 'political' character of Man, what we know of the most backward peoples now extant makes it highly probable that Magic was the sanction of their crude government, supplemented sooner or later by Animism or belief in the influence of spirits, and the consequent growth of kingship and priesthoods. And these beliefs in Magic and Animism (here called Superstition) not only made possible the beginning of government (or its transfer from the pack-leader to the tribal