Sympathetic Magic
By: Tylor Edward Bennet, James. G. Frazer , Alfred L. Kroeber
(In reader in Comparative Religion. William A. Lessa and Evon I Vogt eds. Pp337-351. Fourth edition. New York, Harper and Row, 1979)
This week’s reading is a series of review articles. The first review is on E.B Taylor’s Animism. Secondly, an Ethnologic Psychoanalysis article by Kroeber on Totem and Taboo. Lastly, it is Frazer’s review, The Golden Bough, which focus on the demarcation between “imitative” and “contagious” portion of the “Sympathetic Magic
Tylor’s conception of evolution of a religion required 3 stages. Which are animism, polytheism and monotheism. The first criticism of such unilinear stage is too intellectual. A religion is not only the reduced model of people’s mindset, the emotional aspect of the each stage is also an element neglected by Tylor in his discourse.
The second criticism of Tylor is his refusal to accept the idea of soul might be present in the native. If we understand his time, we would realise he was living in the period when Darwin published his book about Evolution . It is only natural for Tylor to be influenced by Darwin. After all, the entire European believed they were at the pinnacle of human’s achievement , which made them felt they are superior than the Natives .
In Tylor’s theory, Soul is a “invented” concept as the result of the evolution of religion. He anticipated the natives were too “primitive” to understand why objects moving around them. Because the native consider there is a driving supernatural force from within, they worshipped to this driving force.
By drawing evidence from Semitic religion, he described the process of how Christianity was once also in Animistic stage. It is by years of education, the people differentiate the humans from animals and plants, and they finally formulated a theory whereby a supreme being “blows” life into human. This theory of worldview has reduced all “driving force” into a single being , which in Taylor’s understanding , is an evident that human is able to perform abstraction to relate his surrounding . This abstraction has lead man to develop complex theological system to categories the “driving force “around them.
According to Tylor , the human race has to reach a stage of civil society . Once he is no longer living in jungle and lives in the city, his mind is able to develop and reflect the environment. In this line of reasoning, Tylor see the city settlement as the only outcome of human civilisation’s progress. However, he assumed there is a homogenous progression of human’s religion. In his narration, he is ignorant of the religious reformation and effort of early church combining Aristotle philosophy into Christianity.
Tylor is unaware of the philosophical “add-on” into the Judea-Christianity religion. Much of what he understood of the religion is the philosophy, not the religion itself. It is unfair to judge the primitive society when it has no culture of discussing philosophical ideas.
Moreover, the advancement of a race cannot equated to its’ development of religion. During Tylor’s time , European were in the stage of colonising the primitive society . Their state of “advancement” does not grant them the justification to conquer another race.
The ultimate fallacy of Tylor is his conjecture of a religion will evolve like biological being in unilinear model of progression . In this case, he forgoes the individualistic of each group of man, and assumed all will converge to one single religion. His idea becomes like a missionary who is preaching everyone to accept Christianity as the only solution for all. In spite of everything , Tylor’s model was created in favour of justifying the need of the colonisation. ( 618 words )
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