Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

64 The Kouretes, Thunder-Rites and Mana [oh*
of fear or perhaps it would be better called awe, and the sense of
force, power, effectiveness. The awesomeness of the Bull-Roarer
is known to all who have heard it ; it possesses in a high degree
the quality of uncanniness. Heard in the open sunlight it sends
a shudder through even modern nerves; on temperaments more
primitive, more excitable, more suggestible, heard in the darkness
of the rites of 'night-haunting Zagreus ' its effect might well be
one of frenzy 1 .
' The feare of things invisible is the naturall seed of Religion/
said Hobbes, and he spoke truly, but his statement requires some
modification or rather amplification. It is not the fear of the
individual savage that begets religion, it is fear felt together, fear
emphasized, qualified, by a sort of social sanction. Moreover fear
does not quite express the emotion felt. It is rather awe, and awe
contains in it the element of wonder as well as fear 2
; awe is on the
way to be reverence, and reverence is essentially religious. It is
remote entirely from mere blind panic, it is of the nature of
-^attraction rather than repulsion. The Point Barrow natives 3 are
afraid of the Aurora Borealis, they think it may strike them in
the back of the neck. So they brandish knives and throw filth to
drive it away. It is a little difficult to call the act religious. The
famous Primus in orbe deos fecit timor of Lucretius is the truth,
'but not the whole truth. Moreover the fear which has gone to
the making of religion is at least as much social as physical 4 .
This brings us to the second factor in sanctity, the factor
which I think differentiates awe from mere fear, the recognition
of force, power, effectiveness. This comes out very clearly in the
case of the Bull-Roarer. The Bull-Roarer has of course in itself
no power, but its roaring is like the roaring of thunder, and to this
day a Bull-Roarer is called in Scotland a ' thunner spell.' Because
the Bull-Roarer makes the sound of thunder, has the same quality
1 j£sch. Frg. Edoni, Nauck, Frg. 57 iiavlas iwayuybv 6/j.ox\dv.
2 As to the individual psychology of religion I follow mainly Mr W. McDougall,
An Introduction to Social Psychology; see especially the excellent chapter (xin.) on
The Instinctive Bases of Religion.
3 Marett, Threshold of Religion, p. 15, from Murdoch, Point Barrow Expedition,
p. 432.
4 For this religion of fear and wonder Mr Marett (op. cit. p. 13) suggests the
name teratism, which would be excellent but that it leaves no place for the gentler
forces of fertility.