ABSTRACT
One of the oldest anthropological controversies, into which the present writer does not propose to enter at this point, is when and how precisely to distinguish between ‘religious’ and ‘magical’ behaviour. One tempting way out of the difficulty is to avoid the dichotomy altogether, and to speak simply of a people’s attitudes towards the ‘supernatural’. But this merely shifts the onus of classification. Where, aside from western definitions of the matter, do ‘natural’ phenomena end and ‘supernatural’ phenomena begin? The problem is no less difficult among the Mende than with other preliterate people whose every day attitudes and behaviour in this respect are largely a derivative of their general conception of the world about them.
