to him. He has grown up into a world where certain processes, certain activities have their magic, which is as much an attribute of theirs’ as anything else. Some people have been traditionally instructed how this magic runs, and they know it; how men came by magic is told in numerous mythical narratives. That is the correct statement of the native point of view. Once arrived at this conclusion inductively, we can of course, test our conclusions by direct questions, or by a leading question, for the matter of that. To the question: “where human beings found magic?” I obtained the following answer:—
“All magic, they found long ago in the nether world. We do not find ever a spell in a dream; should we say so, this would be a lie. The spirits never give us a spell. Songs and dances they do give us, that is true, but no magic.”
This statement, expressing the belief in a very clear and direct manner, I had confirmed, reiterated with variations and amplifications, by ever so many informants. They all emphasise the fact that magic has its roots in tradition, that it is the most immutable and most valuable traditional item, that it cannot leak into human knowledge by any present human intercourse with spirits or with any non-human beings such as the tokway or tauva’u. The property of having been received from previous generations is so marked that any breach of continuity in this succession cannot be imagined, and any addition by an actual human being would make the magic spurious.
At the same time, magic is conceived as something essentially human. It is not a force of nature, captured by man through some means and put to his service; it is essentially the assertion of man’s intrinsic power over nature. In saying that, I, of course translate native belief into abstract terms, which they would not use themselves for its expression. None the less it is embodied in all their items of folk-lore and ways of using magic and thinking about it. In all the traditions, we find that magic is always in possession of man, or at least of anthropomorphic beings. It is carried out from underground by man. It is not conceived as having been there somewhere outside his knowledge and then captured. On the contrary, as we saw, often the very things which are governed by magic have been brought forth by man, as for instance rain, the kalala fish; or disease, created by the anthropomorphic crab.