some events are such that they naturally suggest questions (Why
me? Why now?) that are simply not answered in terms of ordinary
causal processes. That is, people who do all this know perfectly well
that disease strikes most people at some point or that mud huts will
eventually collapse in a termite-infested village. No one could be
unaware of these general principles. But general principles are just
that—general. That is their weakness. They have nothing to say
about particular cases. People are understandably concerned with
the particulars of each case, not its general aspects. Hence the value
of supernatural explanations, which are relevant to the particulars of
the situation. [197]
In the paragraph above I called some questions "natural," and this
raises another question: What makes them natural? We might think
that there is no great mystery here. The reason why our minds con-
sider such questions as "Why did the roof cave in when I was under-
neath?" or "Why did the ancestors send methis illness?" is that these
questions are the ones our minds must consider if they are well-
designed. Focusing on the specific chain of events that brought about
a particular misfortune may be the best way to avoid a repeat. Once
bitten, twice shy: but only if you know what bit you and how in the
first instance.
But is this a sound explanation? People's ways of talking about mis-
fortune do not seem to correspond to this model. When gods are said
to smite miscreants or when ancestors "send" people some disease,
people do not represent the precise powers of these supernatural
agents but their reasonsfor acting the way they do. In such contexts
people are often extremely vague about the powers but much more
precise about the reasons. God decided to punish the heathen and
send them plague. Notice how no one describes howhe did that. In
fact, no one seems even to think about that aspect of the question! In
the same way, the ancestors make people ill. In most places where peo-
ple entertain this kind of notion, they have only the vaguest notion of
how the ancestors do it. They do not even consider that a relevant or
interesting question. Generally, people do not even think about the
waysin which the powerful agents act, but they are very precise about
theirreasonsfor acting in a particular way. Indeed, these reasons always
have to do with people's interactionwith the powerful agents. People
refused to follow God's orders; they polluted a house against the
ancestors' prescriptions; they had more wealth or good fortune than
their milieu could tolerate; and so on.
WHYDOGODS ANDSPIRITSMATTER?