Magic and Science

Myths and Legends of the Polynesians. Johannes C. Andersen. (Herren. 21s.)

A POLYNESIAN steersman in mid-ocean can point with accuracy in the direction of his home country. He recognizes land long befUre it can be seen over the horizon ; apparently by changes in the formation of clouds and waves which are imperceptible to European eyes. He has his ocean charts and his star- knowledge, and he can even make a calabash serve the purpose of sextant and compass.

The Polynesians are a race of seagoers : for more than a thousand years they have been grappling with the need to bring the forces of nature into comprehension. In their canoes they made journeys as impressive as those of Columbus, sailing sometimes as far as four or five thousand miles. Their legends seem to show that they made their way to the Antarctic regions. One of their heroes brought news of " the frozen sea of arrowroot, with the deceitful animal of that sca who dives to great depths—a foggy, misty and dark place not shone on by the sun. There are other things like rocks whose tops pierce the sky ; they are completely bare, with no vegetation on them." There can be little doubt that the story refers to the wastes of snow, the sea-lions or whales and the icebergs of the Antarctic.

When we teach ourselves to divorce conceptions from each other we run the risk of making too absolute a division. There is much of value, for example, to be learned from discrimination between magic and science ; but, if we solidify this difference, we are tempted to believe that our forefathers knew nothing and we know everything. We forget their needs and purposes and take it that they had a nonsensical outlook on the world, without value or truth.

With the magic of an age its science is always inextricably bound up. A volume of doctrine which we consider as magic was in its own time a body of science also. As it recedes into the past we see more and more error and irrationality. We lose the key of it. We forget its applications and its claim to answer for the facts. Finally it ceases to be scientific and becomes magical. Our modern science undoubtedly comprehends more detail than older world- views : it answers more uniformly to our tests : but it is none the less precisely the same kind of attempt to control nature that was represented in views we now call magical.

Behind the myths and stories of the Polynesians which Mr. Andersen has collected it is often easy to see the part played by the definite and useful attempt to interpret experience. Mr. Andersen distinguishes two main kinds of stories ; or, rather, two versions of the same legends. There is the fireside version in which legends are told for amusement ; and this is the source from which folklore generally comes to us. Often we can mark the gradual degeneration of the myth from an early seriousness and point to a fable or string of

anecdotes. Behind this, older in origin but still persisting in esoteric instruction, is the true and significant version. In this the legend serves a definite purpose : it offers an inter- pretation of the world and contains philosophic or religious or practical information. Mr. Andersen gives a warning to those who would see too much in legends, as if they offered some superior and irrefragable truth. He shows them none the less to be statements in which much experience has been mastered. They should be treated as genuine illuminations, not dismissed as superstition or " mere folklore." •

The Myths and Legends of the Polynesians is a massive book

collected from many sources, a timely piece of work now that the traditions it tells of are being broken up. When a friend of Mr. Andersen had chatted of the old days with an old blind Maori, following a pause in the conversation, the old man said, " Ah, you are making me remember things that you: fellows have been forty years trying to make me forget." The legends themselves, dealing with volcanic goddesses, the sun and moon, seasons and winds, under-world and over-world, are dramatic and vigorous, but rarely gracious or playful. Greatest and most central of all are the myths of the supreme being, Io (" there is no fireside version regarding Io," writes Mr. Andersen), and the myths of creation. A noble fragment of an old Maori chant is quoted, beginning as follows :-

" Io dwelt within breathing space of immensity.

The universe was in darkness with water everywhere.

There was no glimmer of dawn, no clearness, no light.

And he began by saying these words, that he might cease remaining

inactive, Darkness, become a light-possessing darkness.' "

In a sub-title of his book From Magic to Science, Dr. Charles Singer calls his papers " essays on the scientific twilight," not distinguishing even the Dark Ages as a time of deepest and blackest night. He is at his best where he is sympathetic and descriptive ; in the chapters, for example, on ".The

visions of Hildegard " and " Science under the Roman Empire." Although his essay on the safeguarding and demon-repelling charm, the Lorica of Gildas, contains much information, it fails to give us a clear view of the psychological background of magic. Even on Hildegard Dr. Singer's psychological remarks are perfunctory.

The chief glory of the book is in its illustrations. There are fourteen beautifully reproduced coloured plates from mediaeval MSS. and over a hundred other figures and, full- page illustrations. Dr. Singer covers much ground in astrology, magic, medicine, sanitation, geography, botany and other subjects.

If we wish to find an impressive account of the progress of

European science along one special line, we must go to Mr. Ellison Hawks' Pioneers of Plant Study. He begins

with Egypt and carries us through to the nineteenth century : and, as botanists have not always been marked by a good vegetable tranquillity of temper, the story is lively as well as