Robert Ranulph Marett

R. R. Marett (Robert Ranulph) 1866-1943 was a British etnologist (Jersey 1866-1943). Exponent of the British evolutionary school, he dealt with religious ethnology. In this field he modified the evolutionary scale of religion fixed by Tylor, which placed animism to the first place. Marett invented the conception of (magical pre-animism) an impersonal force, identified with the melanesian term of mana. The idea of the mana, mostly psychical than cultural product, was presented mainly in his work The Threshold of Religion (1909) with which he tried to establish the context of presupposed ideas of the religion, to Anthropology (1912) and Psychology and Folklore (1920). R. R. Marett became Reader in Social Anthropology in 1910 Oxford and in 1914 established a Department of Social Anthropology.

R. R. Marett -convinced that primitive man had not developed the intellectual to form even such simplistic explanations as Tylor proposed- criticized E. B. Tylor’s theories about animism, suggesting that early religion was more emotional and intuitional in origin. According to his opinion, early man recognized some inanimate objects because of their specific characteristics. He believed early man treated all animate objects as having a life, but never distinguished soul as separate from the body. Been historically evident that early man did believe in mana, Marett considered insignificant how men and women gained the belief that a spirit or soul resides in all objects.

Works and Lectures

• The Threshold of Religion, (1909)
• Anthropology, (1912)
• Psychology and Folklore, (1920)
• Faith, Hope and Charity in Primitive Religion, (1930–1932)
• Sacraments of Simple Folk, (1930–1932)