II

Let us now proceed to formulate some short statement of the essential conception of magic, as it is entertained by the natives. All statement of belief, found among human beings so widely different from us, is full of difficulties and pitfalls, which perhaps beset us most there, where we try to arrive at the very foundation of the belief—that is, at the most general ideas which underlie a series of practices and a body of traditions. In dealing with a native community at the stage of development which we find in the Trobriands, we cannot expect to obtain a definite, precise and abstract statement from a philosopher, belonging to the community itself. The native takes his fundamental assumptions for granted, and if he reasons or inquires into matters of belief, it would be always only as regards details and concrete applications. Any attempts on the part of the Ethnographer to induce his informant to formulate such a general statement would have to be in the form of leading questions of the worst type because in these leading questions he would have to introduce words and concepts essentially foreign to the native. Once the informant grasped their meaning, his outlook would be warped by our own ideas having been poured into it. Thus the Ethnographer must draw the generalisation for himself, must formulate the abstract statement without the direct help of a native informant.

I am saying direct help because the generalisation must be entirely based on indirect data supplied by the natives. In the course of collecting information, of discussing formulæ and translating their text, a considerable number of opinions on matters of detail will be set forth by the natives. Such spontaneous opinions, if placed in a correctly constructed mosaic, might almost of themselves give us a true picture, might almost cover the whole field of native belief. And then our task would only be to summarise this picture in an abstract formula.

The Ethnographer, however, possesses an even better supply of evidence from which to draw his conclusions. The objective items of culture, into which belief has crystallised in the form of tradition, myth, spell and rite are the most important source of knowledge. In them, we can face the same realities of belief as the native faces in his intimate intercourse with the magical, the same realities which he not only professes with his tongue, but lives through partly in imagination and partly in actual experience. An analysis of the contents of the spells, the study of the manner in which they are uttered; in which the concomitant rites are performed; the study of the natives’ behaviour, of the actors as well as of the spectators; the knowledge of the social position and social functions, of the magical expert—all this reveals to us, not only the bare structure of their ideas on magic, but also the associated sentiments and emotions, and the nature of magic as a social force.

An Ethnographer who, from the study of such objective data, has been able to penetrate into the natives’ attitude, to formulate a general theory of magic, can then test his conclusions by direct questionings. For he will be already in a position to use native terminology and to move along the lines of native thought, and in his questionings he will be able to accept the lead of his informant instead of misleading the latter and himself by leading questions. More especially in obtaining opinions of actual occurrences from the natives, he will not have to move in abstract generalities, but will be able to translate them into concrete applications and into the native modes of thought.

In arriving at such general conclusions about vast aspects of primitive human thought and custom, the Ethnographer’s is a creative work, in so far as he brings to light phenomena of human nature which, in their entirety, had remained hidden even from those in whom they happened. It is creative in the same sense as is the construction of general principles of natural science, where objective laws of very wide application lie hidden till brought forth by the investigating human mind. In the same sense, however, as the principles of natural science are empirical, so are also the final generalisations of ethnographic sociology because, though expressly stated for the first time by the investigator, they are none the less objective realities of human thinking, feeling and behaviour.