ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued 3)

Thus, a very clear distinction exists between the worship of a fetich and the worship of the gods. It is not merely that the fetich is invoked occasionally in aid of antisocial desires: nothing can prevent the worshipper of a god, if the worshipper be bad enough, from praying for that which he ought not to pray for. It is that the gods of the community are there to sanction and further all desires which are for the good of the community, and that the fetich is there to further desires which are not for the good of the community,—hence it is that "public opinion does not approve of them." At another stage of religious evolution, it becomes apparent and is openly pronounced that neither does the god of the community approve of them; and then fetichism, like the sin of witchcraft, is stamped out more or less. But amongst the tribes who have only reached the point of religious progress attained by the natives of West Africa, public opinion has only gone so far as to express disapproval, not to declare war.

If, then, we are to hold to the view of Professor Höffding and of Dr. Haddon, that fetichism is in its essence, or was at the beginning, religious in its nature, though it may be perverted into something non-religious or anti-religious, we must at any rate admit that it has become non-religious not only in the case of those fetichists who assume an attitude of superiority and command to their fetiches, but also in the earlier stage of evolution when the fetichist preserves an attitude of submission and conciliation towards his fetich, but assumes the attitude only for the purpose of realising desires which are anti-social and recognised to be anti-religious.

But, if we take—as I think we must take—that line of argument, the conclusion to which it will bring us is fairly clear and is not far off. The differentia or rather that differentia which characteristically marks off the fetich from the god is the nature of the desires which each exists to promote; the function which each exists to fulfil, the end which is there for each to subserve. But the ends are different. Not only are they different, they are antagonistic. And the process of evolution does but bring out the antagonism, it does not create it. It was there from the beginning. From the moment there was society, there were desires which could only be realised at the cost and to the loss of society, as well as desires in the realisation of which the good of society was realised. The assistance of powers other than human might be sought; and the nature of the power which was sought was determined by the end or purpose for which its aid was employed or invoked—if for the good of society, it was approved by society; if not, not. Its function, the end it subserved, determined its value for society—determined whether public opinion should approve or disapprove of it, whether it was a god of the community or the fetich of an individual. Society can only exist where there is a certain community of purpose among its members; and can only continue to exist where anti-social tendencies are to some extent suppressed or checked by force of public opinion.

Fetichism, then, in its tendency and in its purpose, in the function which it performs and the end at which it aims is not only distinguishable from religion, it is antagonistic to it, from the earliest period of its history to the latest. Religion is social, an affair of the community; fetichism is anti-social, condemned by the community. Public opinion, expressing the moral sentiments of the community as well as its religious feeling, pronounces both moral and religious disapproval of the man who uses a suhman for its special purpose of causing death—committing murder. Fetichism is offensive to the morality as well as to the religion even of the native. To seek the origin of religion in fetichism is as vain as to seek the origin of morality in the selfish and self-seeking tendencies of man. There is no need to enquire whether fetichism is historically prior to religion, or whether religion is historically prior to fetichism. Man, as long as he has lived in societies, must have had desires which were incompatible with the welfare of the community as well as desires which promoted its welfare. The powers which are supposed to care whether the community fares well are the gods of the community; and their worship is the religion of the community. The powers which have no such care are not gods, nor is their worship—if coercion or cajolery can be called worship—religion. The essence of fetichism on its external side is that the owner of the fetich alone has access to it, alone can pray to it, alone can offer sacrifices to it. It is therefore in its inward essence directly destructive of the unity of interests and purposes that society demands and religion promotes. Perhaps it would be going too far to say that the practice of making prayers and offerings to a fetich is borrowed from religious worship: they are the natural and instinctive method of approaching any power which is capable of granting or refusing what we desire. It is the quarter to which they are addressed, and the end for which they are employed, that makes the difference between them. It is the fact that in the one case they are, and in the other are not, addressed to the quarter to which they ought to be addressed, and employed for the end for which they ought to be employed, that makes the difference in religious value between them.

If we bear in mind the simple fact that fetichism is condemned by the religious and moral feelings of the communities in which it exists, we shall not fall into the mistake of regarding fetichism either as the primitive religion of mankind or as a stage of religious development or as "a basis from which many other modes of religious thought have been developed."

Professor Höffding, holding that fetichism is the primitive religion, out of which polytheism was developed, adopts Usener's theory as to the mode of its evolution. "The fetich," Professor Höffding says (p. 140), "is only the provisional and momentary dwelling-place of a spirit. As Hermann Usener has strikingly called it, it is 'the god of a moment.'" But though Professor Höffding adopts this definition of a fetich, it is obvious that the course of his argument requires us to understand it as subject to a certain limitation. His argument in effect is that fetichism is not polytheism, but something different, something out of which polytheism was evolved. And the difference is that polytheism means a plurality of gods, whereas fetichism knows no gods, but only spirits. Inasmuch then as, on the theory—whether it is held by Höffding or by anybody else—that the spirits of fetichism become the gods of polytheism, there must be differences between the spirits of the one and the gods of the other, let us enquire what the differences are supposed to be.

First, there is the statement that a fetich is the "god of a moment," by which must be meant that the spirits which, so long as they are momentary and temporary, are fetiches, must come to be permanent if they are to attain to the rank of gods.

But on this point Dr. Haddon differs. He is quite clear that a fetich may be worshipped permanently without ceasing to be a fetich. And it is indeed abundantly clear that an object only ceases to be worshipped when its owner is convinced that it is not really a fetich; as long as he is satisfied that it is a fetich, he continues its cult—and he continues it because it is his personal property, because he, and not the rest of the community, has access to it.

Next, Höffding argues that it is from these momentary fetiches that special or specialised deities—"departmental gods," as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed them—arise. And these "specialised divinities constitute an advance on gods of the moment" (p. 142). Now, what is implied in this argument, what is postulated but not expressed, is that a fetich has only one particular thing which it can do. A departmental god can only do one particular sort of thing, has one specialised function. A departmental god is but a fetich advanced one stage in the hierarchy of divine beings. Therefore the function of the fetich in the first instance was specialised and limited. But there it is that the à priori argument comes into collision with the actual facts. A fetich, when it presents itself to a man, assists him in the particular business on which he is at the moment engaged. But it only continues to act as a fetich, provided that it assists him afterwards and in other matters also. The desires of the owner are not limited, and consequently neither are his expectations; the business of the fetich is to procure him general prosperity (Haddon, p. 83). As far as fetiches are concerned, it is simply reversing the facts to suppose that it is because one fetich can only do one thing, that many fetiches are picked up. Many objects are picked up on the chance of their proving fetiches, because if the object turns out really to be a fetich it will bring its owner good luck and prosperity generally—there is no knowing what it may do. But it is only to its owner that it brings prosperity—not to other people, not to the community, for the community is debarred access to it.

The next difference between fetichism and polytheism, according to Höffding, is that the gods of polytheism have developed that personality which is not indeed absolutely wanting in the spirits of fetichism but can hardly be said to be properly there. "The transition," he says, "from momentary and special gods to gods which can properly be called personal is one of the most important transitions in the history of religion. It denotes the transition from animism to polytheism" (p. 145). And one of the outward signs that the transition has been effected is, as Usener points out with special emphasis, "that only at a certain stage of evolution, i.e., on the appearance of polytheism, do the gods acquire proper names" (ib. 147).

Now, this argument, I suggest, seeks to make, or to make much of, a difference between fetichism and polytheism which scarcely exists, and so far as it does exist is not the real difference between them. It seeks to minimise, if not to deny, the personality of the fetich, in order to exalt that of the gods of polytheism. And then this difference in degree of personality, this transition from the one degree to the other, is exhibited as "one of the most important transitions in the history of religion." The question therefore is first whether the difference is so great, and next whether it is the real difference between fetichism and religion in the polytheistic stage.

The difference in point of personality between the spirits of fetichism and the gods of polytheism is not absolute. The fetich, according to Dr. Haddon, "possesses personality and will, it has also many human characters. It possesses most of the human passions, anger, revenge, also generosity and gratitude; it is within reach of influence and may be benevolent, is hence to be deprecated and placated, and its aid to be enlisted" (p. 83); "the fetich is worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, and talked with" (p. 89).

But, perhaps it may be said that, though the fetich does "possess personality," it is only when it has acquired sufficient personality to enjoy a proper name that it becomes a god, or fetichism passes into polytheism. To this the reply is that polytheism does not wait thus deferentially on the evolution of proper names. There was a period in the evolution of the human race when men neither had proper names of their own nor knew their fellows by proper names; and yet they doubted not their personality. The simple fact is that he who is to receive a name—whether he be a human being or a spiritual being—must be there in order to be named. When he is there he may receive a name which has lost all meaning, as proper names at the present day have generally done; or one which has a meaning. A mother may address her child as "John" or as "boy," but, whichever form of address she uses, she has no doubt that the child has a personality. The fact that a fetich has not acquired a proper name is not a proof that it has acquired no personality; if it can, as Dr. Haddon says it can, be "petted or ill-treated with regard to its past or future behaviour" (p. 90), its personality is undeniable. If it can be "worshipped, prayed to, sacrificed to, talked with," it is as personal as any deity in a pantheon. If it has no proper name, neither at one time had men themselves. And Höffding himself seems disinclined to follow Usener on this point: "no important period," he says (p. 147), "in the history of religion can begin with an empty word. The word can neither be the beginning nor exist at the beginning." Finally Höffding, to enforce the conclusion that polytheism is evolved from fetichism, says: "The influence exerted by worship on the life of religious ideas can find no more striking exemplification than in the word 'god' itself: when we study those etymologies of this word which, from the philological point of view, appear most likely to be correct, we find the word really means 'he to whom sacrifice is made,' or 'he who is worshipped'" (p. 148). Professor Wilhelm Thomsen considers the first explanation the more probable: "In that case there would be a relationship between the root of the word 'gott' and 'giessen' (to pour), as also between the Greek chéein, whose root chu = the Sanskrit hu, from which comes huta, which means 'sacrificed,' as well as 'he to whom sacrifices are made'" (p. 396). Now, if "god" means either "he to whom sacrifice is made" or "he who is worshipped," we have only to enquire by whom the sacrifice is made or the worship paid, according to Professor Höffding, in order to see the value of this philological argument. A leading difference between a fetich and a god is that sacrifice is made and worship paid to the fetich by its owner, to the god by the community. Now this philological derivation of "god" throws no light whatever on the question by whom the "god" is worshipped; but the content of the passage which I have quoted shows that Professor Höffding himself here understands the worship of a god to be the worship paid by the community. If that is so, and if the function or a function of the being worshipped is to grant the desires of his worshippers, then the function of the being worshipped by the community is to grant the desires of the community. And if that is the distinguishing mark or a distinguishing mark of a god, then the worship of a god differs toto caelo from the worship paid to a fetich, whose distinguishing mark is that it is subservient to the anti-social wishes of its owner, and is not worshipped by the community. And it is just as impossible to maintain that a god is evolved out of a fetich as it would be to argue—indeed it is arguing—that practices destructive of society or social welfare have only to be pushed far enough and they will prove the salvation of society.

If in the animistic stage, when everything that is is worked by spirits, it is possible and desirable for the individual to gain his individual ends by the coöperation of some spirit, it is equally possible and more desirable for the community to gain the aid of a spirit which will further the ends for the sake of which the community exists. But those ends are not transient or momentary, neither therefore can the spirit who promotes them be a "momentary" god. And if we accept Höffding's description of the simplest and earliest manifestation of the religious spirit as being belief "in a power which cares whether he [man] has or has not experiences which he values," we must be careful to make it clear that the power worshipped by a community is worshipped because he is believed to care that the community should have the experiences which the community values. Having made that stipulation, we may accept Höffding's further statement (p. 147) that "even the momentary and special gods implied the existence of a personifying tendency and faculty"; for, although from our point of view a momentary god is a self-contradictory notion, we are quite willing to agree that this tendency to personification may be taken as primary and primitive: religion from the beginning has been the search after a power essentially personal. But that way of conceiving spiritual powers is not in itself distinctive of or confined to religion: it is an intellectual conception; it is the essence of animism, and animism is not religion. To say that an emotional element also must be present is true; but neither will that serve to mark off fetichism from religion. Fetichism also is emotional in tone: it is in hope that the savage picks up the thing that may prove to have the fetich power; and it is with fear that he recognises his neighbour's suhman. A god is not merely a power conceived of intellectually and felt emotionally to be a personal power from whom things may be hoped or feared; he must indeed be a personal power and be regarded with hope and fear, but it is by a community that he must be so regarded. And the community, in turning to such a power, worships him with sacrifice: a god is indeed he to whom sacrifice is made and worship paid by the community, with whose interests and whose morality—with whose good, in a word, he is from the beginning identified. "In the absence of experience of good as one of the realities of life, no one," Höffding says, "would ever have believed in the goodness of the gods"; and, we may add, it is as interested in and caring for the good of the community that the god of the community is worshipped. It is in the conviction that he does so care, that religious feeling is rooted; or, as Höffding puts it (p. 162), it is rooted in "the need to collect and concentrate ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried by a power raised above all struggle and opposition and beyond all change." There we have, implicit from the beginning, that communion with god, or striving thereafter, which is essential to worship. It is faith. It is rest. It is the heart's desire. And it is not fetichism, nor is fetichism it.

PRAYER

The physician, if he is to do his work, must know both a healthy and a diseased body, or organ, when he sees it. He must know the difference between the two and the symptoms both of health and disease. Otherwise he is in danger of trying to cure an organ which is healthy already—in which case his remedies will simply aggravate the disease. That is obviously true of the physician who seeks to heal the body, and it is equally, if not so obviously, true of the physician who seeks to minister to a mind, or a soul, diseased. Now, the missionary will find that the heathen, to whom he is to minister, have the habit of prayer; and the question arises, What is to be his attitude towards it? He cannot take up the position that prayer is in itself a habit to be condemned; he is not there to eradicate the habit, or to uproot the tendency. Neither is he there to create the habit; it already exists, and the wise missionary will acknowledge its existence with thankfulness. His business is not to teach his flock to pray, but how to pray, that is to say, for what and to whom. But even if he thus wisely recognises that prayer is a habit not to be created, but to be trained by him, it is still possible for him to assume rashly that it is simply impossible for a heathen ever to pray for anything that is right, and therefore, that it is a missionary's duty first to insist that everything for which a savage or barbarian prays must be condemned as essentially irreligious and wicked. In that case, what will such a missionary, if sent to the Khonds of Orissa, say, when he finds them praying thus: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us!"? Can he possibly say to his flock, "All your prayers, all the things that you pray for now, are wicked; and your only hope of salvation lies in ceasing to pray for them"? If not, then he must recognise the fact that it is possible for the heathen to pray, and to pray for some things that it is right to pray for. And he must not only recognise the fact, but he must utilise it. Nay! more, he must not only recognise the fact if it chances to force itself upon him, he must go out of his way with the deliberate purpose of finding out what things are prayed for. He will then find himself in more intimate contact with the soul of the man than he can ever attain to in any other way; and he may then find that there are other things for which petitions are put up which could not be prayed for save by a man who had a defective or erroneous conception of Him who alone can answer prayer.

But it is a blundering, unbusinesslike way of managing things if the missionary has to go out to his work unprepared in this essential matter, and has to find out these things for himself—and perhaps not find them out at all. The applied science of religion should equip him in this respect; it should be able to take the facts and truths established by the science of religion and apply them to the purposes of the missionary. But it is a striking example of the youth and immaturity of the science of religion that no attempt has yet been made by it to collect the facts, much less to coördinate and state them scientifically. If a thing is clear, when we come to think of it, in the history of religion, it is that the gods are there to be prayed to: man worships them because it is on their knees that all things lie. It is from them that man hopes all things; it is in prayer that man expresses his hopes and desires. It is from his prayers that we should be able to find out what the gods really are to whom man prays. What is said about them in mythology—or even in theology—is the product of reflection, and is in many cases demonstrably different from what is given in consciousness at the moment when man is striving after communion with the Highest. Yet it is from mythology, or from the still more reflective and deliberative expression of ritual, of rites and ceremonies, that the science of religion has sought to infer the nature of the gods man worships. The whole apparatus of religion, rites and ceremonies, sacrifice and altars, nature-worship and polytheism, has been investigated; the one thing overlooked has been the one thing for the sake of which all the others exist, the prayer in which man's soul rises, or seeks to rise, to God.

The reason given by Professor Tylor (Primitive Culture, II, 364) for this is not that the subject is unimportant, but that it is so simple; "so simple and familiar," he says, "is the nature of prayer that its study does not demand that detail of fact and argument which must be given to rites in comparison practically insignificant." Now, it is indeed the case that things which are familiar may appear to be simple; but it is also the case that sometimes things are considered simple merely because they are familiar, and not because they are simple. The fact that they are not so simple as every one has assumed comes to be suspected when it is discovered that people take slightly different views of them. Such slightly different views may be detected in this case.

Professor Höffding holds that, in the lowest form in which religion manifests itself, "religion appears under the guise of desire," thus ranging himself on the side of an opinion mentioned by Professor Tylor (op. cit., II, 464) that, as regards the religion of the lower culture, in prayer "the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage." Now, starting from this position that prayer is the expression of desire, we have only to ask, whose desire? that of the individual or that of the community? and we shall see that under the simple and familiar phrase of "the accomplishment of desire" there lurks a difference of view which may possibly widen out into a very wide difference of opinion. If we appeal to the facts, we may take as an instance a prayer uttered "in loud uncouth voice of plaintive, piteous tone" by one of the Osages to Wohkonda, the Master of Life: "Wohkonda, pity me, I am very poor; give me what I need; give me success against mine enemies, that I may avenge the death of my friends. May I be able to take scalps, to take horses!" etc. (Tylor, II, 365). So on the Gold Coast a negro in the morning will pray, "Heaven! grant that I may have something to eat this day" (ib., 368), not "give us this day our daily bread"; or, raising his eyes to heaven, he will thus address the god of heaven: "God, give me to-day rice and yams, gold and agries, give me slaves, riches and health, and that I may be brisk and swift!" (ib.). On the other hand, John Tanner (Narrative, p. 46) relates that when Algonquin Indians were setting out in a fleet of frail bark canoes across Lake Superior, the chief addressed a prayer to the Great Spirit: "You have made this lake; and you have made us, your children; you can now cause that the water shall remain smooth while we pass over in safety." The chief, it will be observed, did not expressly call the Great Spirit "our Father," but he did speak of himself and his men as "your children." If we cross over to Africa, again, we find the Masai women praying thus; and be it observed that though the first person singular is used, it is used by the chorus of women, and is plural in effect:—

When Professor Tylor says that by the savage "the accomplishment of desire is asked for, but desire is as yet limited to personal advantage," we must be careful not to infer that the only advantage a savage is capable of praying for is his own selfish advantage. Professor Tylor himself quotes (II, 366) the following prayer from the war-song of a Delaware:—

Nor is it exclusively for their own personal advantage that the Masai women are concerned when they pray for the safe return of their sons from the wars:—

Nor is it in a purely selfish spirit that the Masai women pray that their warriors may have the advantage over all their enemies:—

Again, the rain that is prayed for by the Manganja of Lake Nyassa is an advantage indeed, but one enjoyed by the community and prayed for by the community. They made offerings to the Supreme Deity that he might give them rain, and "the priestess dropped the meal handful by handful on the ground, each time calling in a high-pitched voice, 'Hear thou, O God, and send rain!' and the assembled people responded, clapping their hands softly and intoning (they always intone their prayers), 'Hear thou, O God'" (Tylor, p. 368).

The appeal then to facts shows that it is with the desires of the community that the god of the community is concerned, and that it is by a representative of the community that those desires are offered up in prayer, and that the community may join in. The appeal to facts shows, also, that an individual may put up individual petitions, as when a Yebu will pray: "God in heaven protect me from sickness and death. God give me happiness and wisdom." But we may safely infer that the only prayers that the god of the community is expected to harken to are prayers that are consistent with the interests and welfare of the community.

From that point of view we must refuse to give more than a guarded assent to the "opinion that prayer appeared in the religion of the lower culture, but that in this its earlier stage it was unethical" (Tylor, 364). Prayer obviously does appear in the religion of the lower culture, but to say that it there is unethical is to make a statement which requires defining. The statement means what Professor Tylor expresses later on in the words: "It scarcely appears as though any savage prayer, authentically native in its origin, were ever directed to obtain moral goodness or to ask pardon for moral sin" (p. 373). But it might be misunderstood to mean that among savages it was customary or possible to pray for things recognised by the savage himself as wrong, and condemned by the community at large. In the first place, however, the god of the community simply as being the god of the community would not tolerate such prayers. Next, the range and extent of savage morality is less extensive than it is—or at any rate than it ought to be—in our day; and though we must recognise and at the right time insist upon the difference, that ought not to make us close our eyes to the fact that the savage does pray to do the things which savage morality holds it incumbent on him to do, for instance to fight bravely for the good of his wife, his children, and his tribe, to carry out the duty of avenging murder. And if he prays for wealth he also prays for wisdom; if he prays that his god may deliver him from sickness, that shows he is human rather than that he is a low type of humanity.

It would seem, then, that though in religions of low culture we meet religion under the guise of desire, we also find that religion makes a distinction between desires; there are desires which may be expressed to the god of the community, and desires which may not. Further, though it is in the heart of a person and an individual that desire must originate, it does not follow that prayer originates in individual desire. To say so, we must assume that the same desire cannot possibly originate simultaneously in different persons. But that is a patently erroneous assumption: in time of war, the desire for victory will spring up simultaneously in the hearts of all the tribe; in time of drought, the prayer for rain will ascend from the hearts of all the people; at the time of the sowing of seed a prayer for "the kindly fruits of the earth" may be uttered by every member of the community. Now it is precisely these desires, which being desires must originate in individual souls, yet being desires of every individual in the community are the desires of the community, that are the desires which take the form of prayer offered by the community or its representative to the god of the community. Anti-social desires cannot be expressed by the community or sanctioned by religion. Prayer is the essential expression of true socialism; and the spirit which prompts it is and has always been the moving spirit of social progress.

Professor Tylor, noticing the "extreme development of mechanical religion, the prayer-mill of the Tibetan Buddhists," suggests that it "may perhaps lead us to form an opinion of large application in the study of religion and superstition; namely, that the theory of prayers may explain the origin of charms. Charm-formulæ," he says, "are in very many cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man by some unexplained process, may not they or the types they have been modelled on have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic sentences?" (P. C. II, 372-373). Now, if this suggestion of Professor Tylor's be correct, it will follow that as charms and spells are degraded survivals of prayer, so magic generally—of which charms and spells are but one department—is a degradation of religion. That in many cases charms and spells are survivals of prayer—formulæ from which all spirit of religion has entirely evaporated—all students of the science of religion would now admit. That prayers may stiffen into traditional formulæ, and then become vain repetitions which may actually be unintelligible to those who utter them, and so be conceived to have a force which is purely magical and a "nature practically assimilated more or less to that of charms" (l.c.), is a fact which cannot be denied. But when once the truth has been admitted that prayers may pass into spells, the possibility is suggested that it is out of spells that prayer has originated. Mercury raised to a high temperature becomes red precipitate; and red precipitate exposed to a still greater heat becomes mercury again. Spells may be the origin of prayers, if prayers show a tendency to relapse into spells. That possibility fits in either with the theory that magic preceded religion or still more exactly with the theory that religion simply is magic raised, so to speak, to a higher moral temperature. We have therefore to consider the possibility that the process of evolution has been from spell to prayer (R. R. Marett, Folk-Lore XV, 2, pp. 132-166); and let us begin the consideration by observing that the reverse passage—from prayer to spell—is only possible on the condition that religion evaporates entirely in the process. The prayer does not become a charm until the religion has disappeared entirely from it: a charm therefore is that in which no religion is, and out of which consequently no religion can be extracted. If then, per impossibile, it could be demonstrated that there was a period in the history of mankind, when charms and magic existed, and religion was utterly unknown; if it be argued that the spirit of religion, when at length it breathed upon mankind, transformed spells into prayers—still all that would then be maintained is that spoken formulæ which were spells were followed by other formulæ which are the very opposite of spells. Must we not, however, go one step further and admit that one and the same form of words may be prayer and religion when breathed in one spirit, and vain repetition and mere magic when uttered in another? Let us admit that the difference between prayer and spell lies in the difference of the spirit inspiring them; and then we shall see that the difference is essential, fundamental, as little to be ignored as it is impossible to bridge.

The formula used by the person employing it to express his desire may or may not in itself suffice to show whether it is religious in intent and value. Thus in West Africa the women of Framin dance and sing, "Our husbands have gone to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth" (Frazer, Golden Bough,^2 I, 34). We may compare the song sung in time of war by the Masai women: "O God, to whom I pray for offspring, may our children return hither" (Hollis, p. 351); and there seems no reason why, since the Masai song is religious, the Framin song may not be regarded as religious also. But we have to remember that both prayers and spells have a setting of their own: the desires which they express manifest themselves not only in what is said but in what is done; and, when we enquire what the Framin women do whilst they sing the words quoted above, we find that they dance with brushes in their hands. The brushes are quite as essential as the words. It is therefore suggested that the whole ceremony is magical, that the sweeping is sympathetic magic and the song is a spell. The words explain what the action is intended to effect, just as in New Caledonia when a man has kindled a smoky fire and has performed certain acts, he "invokes his ancestors and says, 'Sun! I do this that you may be burning hot, and eat up all the clouds in the sky'" (Frazer, ib., 116). Again, amongst the Masai in time of drought a charm called ol-kora is thrown into a fire; the old men encircle the fire and sing:—

If the ol-kora which is thrown into the fire makes it rise in clouds of smoke, resembling the rain-clouds which are desired, then here too the ceremony taken as a whole presents the appearance of a magical rite accompanied by a spoken spell. It is true that in this case the ceremony is reënforced by an appeal to a god, just as in the New Caledonian case it is reënforced by an appeal to ancestor worship. But this may be explained as showing that here we have magic and charms being gradually superseded by religion and prayer; the old formula and the old rite are in process of being suffused by a new spirit, the spirit of religion, which is the very negation and ultimately the destruction of the old spirit of magic. Before accepting this interpretation, however, which is intended to show the priority of magic to religion, we may notice that it is not the only interpretation of which the facts are susceptible. It is based on the assumption that the words uttered are intended as an explanation of the meaning of the acts performed. If that assumption is correct, then the performer of the ceremony is explaining its meaning and intention to somebody. To whom? In the case of the New Caledonian ceremony, to the ancestral spirits; in the case of the Masai old men, to the god. Thus, the religious aspect of the ceremony appears after all to be an essential part of the ceremony, and not a new element in an old rite. And, then, we may consistently argue that the Framin women who sing, "Our husbands have gone to Ashantee land; may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth," are either still conscious that they are addressing a prayer to their native god; or that, if they are no longer conscious of the fact, they once were, and what was originally prayer has become by vain repetition a mere spell. All this is on the assumption that in these ceremonies, the words are intended to explain the meaning of the acts performed, and therefore to explain it to somebody, peradventure he will understand and grant the performer of the ceremony his heart's desire. But, as the consequences of the assumption do not favour the theory that prayer must be preceded by spell, let us discard the assumption that the words explain the meaning of the acts performed. Let us consider the possibility that perhaps the actions which are gone through are meant to explain the words and make them more forcible. It is undeniable that in moments of emotion we express ourselves by gesture and the play of our features as well as by our words; indeed, in reading a play we are apt to miss the full meaning of the words simply because they are not assisted and interpreted by the actor's gestures and features. If we take up this position, that the things done are explanatory of the words uttered and reënforce them, then the sweeping which is acted by the Framin women again is not magical; it simply emphasises the words, "may they sweep their enemies off the face of the earth," and shows to the power appealed to what it is that is desired. The smoke sent up by the New Caledonian ancestor worshipper or the Masai old men is a way of indicating the clouds which they wish to attract or avert respectively. An equally clear case comes from the Kei Islands: "When the warriors have departed, the women return indoors and bring out certain baskets containing fruits and stones. These fruits and stones they anoint and place on a board, murmuring as they do so, 'O lord sun, moon, let the bullets rebound from our husbands, brothers, betrothed, and other relations, just as raindrops rebound from these objects which are smeared with oil'" (Frazer, op. cit., p. 33). It is, I think, perfectly reasonable to regard the act performed as explanatory of the words uttered and of the thing desired; the women themselves explain to their lords, the sun and moon,—with the precision natural to women when explaining what they want,—exactly how they want the bullets to bounce off, just like raindrops. Dr. Frazer, however, from whom I have quoted this illustration, not having perhaps considered the possibility that the acts performed may be explanatory of the words, is compelled to explain the action as magical: "in this custom the ceremony of anointing stones in order that the bullets may recoil from the men like raindrops from the stones is a piece of pure sympathetic or imitative magic." He is therefore compelled to suggest that the prayer to the sun is a prayer that he will give effect to the charm, and is perhaps a later addition. But independently of the possibility that the actions performed are explanatory of the words, or rather that words and actions both are intended to make clear to the sun precisely what the petition is, what tells against Dr. Frazer's suggestion is that the women want the bullets to bounce off, and it is the power of the god to which they appeal and on which they rely for the fulfilment of their prayer.

There is, however, a further consideration which we should perhaps take into account. Man, when he has a desire which he wishes to realise,—and the whole of our life is spent in trying to realise what we wish,—takes all the steps which experience shows to be necessary or reason suggests; and, when he has done everything that he can do, he may still feel that nothing is certain in this life, and the thing may not come off. Under those circumstances he may, and often does, pray that success may attend his efforts. Now Dr. Frazer, in the second edition of his Golden Bough, wishing to show that the period of religion was preceded by a non-religious period in the history of mankind, suggests that at first man had no idea that his attempts to realise his desires could fail, and that it was his "tardy recognition" of the fact that led him to religion. This tardy recognition, he says, probably "proceeded very slowly, and required long ages for its more or less perfect accomplishment. For the recognition of man's powerlessness to influence the course of nature on a grand scale must have been gradual" (I, 78). I would suggest, however, that it cannot have taken "long ages" for savage man to discover that his wishes and his plans did not always come off. It is, I think, going too far to imagine that for long ages man had no idea that his attempts to realise his desires could fail. If religion arises, as Dr. Frazer suggests, when man recognises his own weakness and his own powerlessness, often, to effect what he most desires, then man in his most primitive and most helpless condition must have been most ready to recognise that there were powers other than himself, and to desire, that is to pray for, their assistance. Doubtless it would be at the greater crises, times of pestilence, drought, famine and war, that his prayers would be most insistent; but it is in the period of savagery that famine is most frequent and drought most to be feared. Against them he takes all the measures known to him, all the practical steps which natural science, as understood by him, can suggest. Now his theory and practice include many things which, though they are in later days regarded as uncanny and magical, are to him the ordinary natural means of producing the effects which he desires. But when he has taken all the steps which practical reason suggests, and experience of the past approves, savage man, harassed by the dread of approaching drought or famine, may still breathe out the Manganja prayer, "Hear thou, O God, and send rain." When, however, he does so, it is, I suggest, doubly erroneous to infer that this prayer takes the place of a spell or that apart from the prayer the acts performed are, and originally were, magical. These acts may be based on the principle that like produces like and may be performed as the ordinary, natural means for producing the effect, which have nothing magical about them. And they are accompanied by a prayer which is not a mere explanation or statement of the purpose with which the acts are performed, but is the expression of the heart's desire.

No à priori proofs of any cogency, therefore, have been adduced by Dr. Frazer, and none therefore are likely to be produced by any one else, to show that there was ever a period in the history of man when prayers and religion were unknown to him. The question remains whether any actual instances are known to the science of religion. Unfortunately, as I pointed out at the beginning of this lecture, so neglected by the science of religion has been the subject of prayer that even now we are scarcely able to go beyond the statement made more than a quarter of a century ago by Professor Tylor that, "at low levels of civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought" (P. C. II, 364). Professor Tylor's statement is properly guarded: there are races not certainly known to pray. The possibility that they may yet be discovered to make prayers is not excluded.

Now, if we turn to one of the lowest levels of culture, that of the Australian black fellows, we shall find that there is much doubt amongst students whether the "aborigines have consciously any form of religion whatever" (Howitt, Native Tribes of S. E. Australia), and in southeast Australia Mr. Howitt thinks it cannot be alleged that they have, though their beliefs are such that they might easily have developed into an actual religion (p. 507). Now one of the tribes of southeast Australia is that of the Dieri. With them rain is very important, for periods of drought are frequent; and "rain-making ceremonies are considered of much consequence" (p. 394). The ceremonies are symbolic: there is "blood to symbolise the rain" and two large stones "representing gathering clouds presaging rain," just as the New Caledonian sends up clouds of smoke to symbolise rain-clouds, and the Masai, we have conjectured, throw ol-kora into the fire for the same purpose. But the New Caledonian not only performs the actions prescribed for the rite, he also invokes the spirits of his ancestors; and the Masai not only go through the proper dance, but call upon the god of the rain-cloud. The Dieri, however, ought to be content with their symbolic or sympathetic magic and not offer up any prayer. But, being unaware of this fact, they do pray: they call "upon the rain-making Mura-muras to give them power to make a heavy rainfall, crying out in loud voices the impoverished state of the country, and the half-starved condition of the tribe, in consequence of the difficulty in procuring food in sufficient quantity to preserve life" (p. 394). The Mura-muras seem to be ancestral spirits, like those invoked by the New Caledonian. If we turn to the Euahlayi tribe of northwestern New South Wales, we find that at the Boorah rites a prayer is offered to Byamee, "asking him to let the blacks live long, for they have been faithful to his charge as shown by the observance of the Boorah ceremony" (L. Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, p. 79). That is the prayer of the community to Byamee, and is in conformity with what we have noted before, viz. that it is with the desires of the community that the god of the community is concerned. Another prayer, the nature of which is not stated by Mrs. Parker, by whom the information is given us, is put up at funerals, presumably to Byamee by the community or its representative. Mrs. Parker adds: "Though we say that actually these people have but two attempts at prayers, one at the grave and one at the inner Boorah ring, I think perhaps we are wrong. When a man invokes aid on the eve of battle, or in his hour of danger and need; when a woman croons over her baby an incantation to keep him honest and true, and that he shall be spared in danger,—surely these croonings are of the nature of prayers born of the same elementary frame of mind as our more elaborate litanies." As an instance of the croonings Mrs. Parker gives the mother's song over her baby as soon as it begins to crawl:—-

These instances may suffice to show that it would not have been safe to infer, a year or two ago, from the fact that the Australians were not known to pray, that therefore prayer was unknown to them. Indeed, we may safely go farther and surmise that other instances besides those noted really exist, though they have not been observed or if observed have not been understood. Among the northern tribes of central Australia rites are performed to secure food, just as they are performed by the Dieri to avert drought. The Dieri rites are accompanied by a prayer, as we have seen. The Kaitish rites to promote the growth of grass are accompanied by the singing of words, which "have no meaning known to the natives of the present day" (Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes, p. 292). Amongst the Mara tribe the rain-making rite consists simply in "singing" the water, drinking it and spitting it out in all directions. In the Anula tribe "dugongs are a favourite article of food," and if the natives desire to bring them out from the rocks, they "can do so by 'singing' and throwing sticks at the rocks" (ib., pp. 313, 314). It is reasonable to suppose that in all these cases the "singing" is now merely a charm. But if we remember that prayers, when their meaning is forgotten, pass by vain repetitions into mere charms, we may also reasonably suppose that these Australian charms are degraded prayers; and we shall be confirmed in this supposition to some extent by the fact that in the Kaitish tribes the words sung "have no meaning known to the natives of the present day." If the meaning has evaporated, the religion may have evaporated with it. That the rites, of which the "singing" is an essential part, have now become magical and are used and understood to be practised purely to promote the supply of dugongs and other articles of food, may be freely admitted; but it is unsafe to infer that the purpose with which the rites continue to be practised is the whole of the purpose with which they were originally performed. If the meaning of the "singing" has passed entirely away, the meaning of the rites may have suffered a change. At the present day the rite is understood to increase the supply of dugongs or other articles of food. But it may have been used originally for other purposes. Presumably rites of a similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening star. But they do not eat flies or beetles. Their original purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for a totem. But if the object of the rites is not to increase the number of mosquitoes, flies, and beetles, it need not in the first instance have been the object with which the rites were celebrated in the case of other totems.

Let us now return to Professor Tylor's statement that "at low levels of civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought." The number of those races who are not known to pray is being reduced, as we have seen. And I think we may go even farther than that and say that where the existence of spirits is not merely believed in, but is utilised for the purpose of establishing permanent relations between a community and a spirit, we may safely infer that the community offers prayer to the spirit, even though the fact may have escaped the notice of travellers. The reason why we may infer it is that at the lower levels of civilisation we meet with religion, in Höffding's words, "in the guise of desire." We may put the same truth in other words and say that religion is from the beginning practical. Such prayers as are known to us to be put up by the lowest races are always practical: they may be definite petitions for definite goods such as harvest or rain or victory in time of war; or they may be general petitions such as that of the Khonds: "We are ignorant of what it is good for us to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." But in any case what the god of a community is there for is to promote the good of the community. It is because the savage has petitions to put up that he believes there are powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the very root of religion. When the savage has taken every measure he knows of to produce the result he desires, he then goes on to pray for the rainfall he desires, crying out in a loud voice "the impoverished state of the country and the half-starved condition of the tribe." It is true that it is in moments of stress particularly, if not solely, that the savage turns to his god—and the same may be said of many of us—but it is with confidence and hope that he turns to him. If he had no confidence and no hope, he would offer no prayers. But he has hope, he has faith; and every time he prays his heart says, if his words do not, "in Thee, Lord, do we put our trust."

That prayer is the essence, the very breath, of religion, without which it dies, is shown by the fact that amongst the very lowest races of mankind we find frequent traditions of the existence of a high god or supreme being, the creator of the world and the father of mankind. The numerous traces of this dying tradition have been collected by the untiring energy and the unrivalled knowledge of Mr. Andrew Lang in his book, The Making of Religion. In West Africa Dr. Nassau (Fetichism in West Africa, pp. 36 ff.) "hundreds of times" (p. 37) has found that "they know of a Being superior to themselves, of whom they themselves," he says, "inform me that he is the Maker and the Father." What is characteristic of the belief of the savages in this god is that, in Dr. Nassau's words, "it is an accepted belief, but it does not often influence their life. 'God is not in all their thought.' In practice they give Him no worship." The belief is in fact a dying tradition; and it is dying because prayer is not offered to this remote and traditional god. I say that the belief is a dying tradition, and I say so because its elements, which are all found present and active where a community believes in, prays to, and worships the god of the community, are found partially, but only partially, present where the belief survives but as a tradition. Thus, for instance, where the belief is fully operative, the god of the community sanctions the morality of the community; but sometimes where the belief has become merely traditional, this traditional god is supposed to take no interest in the community and exercises no ethical influence over the community. Thus, in West Africa, Nyankupon is "ignored rather than worshipped." In the Andaman Islands, on the other hand, where the god Puluga is still angered by sin or wrong-doing, he is pitiful to those in pain or distress and "sometimes deigns to afford relief" (Lang p. 212 quoting Man, J. A. I., XII, 158). Again, where the belief in the god of the community is fully operative, the occasions on which the prayers of the community are offered are also the occasions on which sacrifice is made. Where sacrifice and prayers are not offered, the belief may still for a time survive, at it does among the Fuegians. They make no sacrifice and, as far as is known, offer no prayers; but to kill a man brings down the wrath of their god, the big man in the woods: "Rain come down, snow come down, hail come down, wind blow, blow, very much blow. Very bad to kill man. Big man in woods no like it, he very angry" (Lang, p. 188, quoting Fitzroy, II, 180). But when sacrifice and prayer cease, the ultimate outcome is that which is found amongst the West African natives, who, as Dr. Nassau tells us (p. 38), say with regard to Anzam, whom they admit to be their Creator and Father, "Why should we care for him? He does not help nor harm us. It is the spirits who can harm us whom we fear and worship, and for whom we care." Who the spirits are Dr. Nassau does not say, but they must be either the other gods of the place or the fetich spirits. And the reason why Anzam is no longer believed to help or harm the natives is obviously that, from some cause or other, there is now no longer any established form of worship of him. The community of which he was originally the god may have broken up, or more probably may have been broken up, with the result that the congregation which met to offer prayer and sacrifice to Anzam was scattered; and the memory of him alone survives. Nothing would be more natural, then, than that the natives, when asked by Dr. Nassau, "Why do you not worship him?" (p. 38), should invent a reason, viz. that it is no use worshipping him now—the truth being that the form of worship has perished for reasons now no longer present to the natives' mind. In any case, when prayers cease to be offered—whether because the community is broken up or because some new quarter is discovered to which prayers can be offered with greater hope of success—when prayers, for any reason, do cease to be offered to a god, the worship of him begins to cease also, for the breath of life has departed from it.

In this lecture, as my subject is primitive religion, I have made no attempt to trace the history of prayer farther than the highest point which it reaches in the lower levels of religion. That is the point reached by the Khond prayer: "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." That is also the highest point reached by the most religious mind amongst the ancient Greeks: Socrates prayed the gods simply for things good, because the gods knew best what is good (Xen., Mem., I, iii, 2). The general impression left on one's mind by the prayers offered in this stage of religious development is that man is here and the gods are—there. But "there" is such a long way off. And yet, far off as it is, man never came to think it was so far off that the gods could not hear. The possibility of man's entering into some sort of communication with them was always present. Nay! more, a community of interests between him and them was postulated: the gods were to promote the interests of the community, and man was to serve the gods. On occasions when sacrifice was made and prayer was offered, the worshippers entered into the presence of God, and communion with Him was sought; but stress was laid rather on the sacrifice offered than on the prayers sent up. The communion at which animal sacrifice aimed may have been gross at times, and at others mystic; but it was the sacrifice rather than the prayer which accompanied it that was regarded as essential to the communion desired, as the means of bridging the gap between man here and the gods there. If, however, the gap was to be bridged, a new revelation was necessary, one revealing the real nature of the sacrifice required by God, and of the communion desired by man. And that revelation is made in Our Lord's Prayer. With the most earnest and unfeigned desire to use the theory of evolution as a means of ordering the facts of the history of religion and of enabling us—so far as it can enable us—to understand them, one is bound to notice as a fact that the theory of evolution is unable to account for or explain the revelation, made in Our Lord's Prayer, of the spirit which is both human and divine. It is the beam of light which, when turned on the darkness of the past, enables us to see whither man with his prayers and his sacrifices had been blindly striving, the place where he fain would be. It is the surest beacon the missionary can hold out to those who are still in darkness and who show by the fact that they pray—if only for rain, for harvest, and victory over all their enemies—that they are battling with the darkness and that they have not turned entirely away from the light of His countenance who is never at any time far from any one of us. Their heart within them is ready to bear witness. Religion is present in them, if only under "the guise of desire"; but it is "the desire of all nations" for which they yearn.

There are, Höffding says, "two tendencies in the nature of religious feeling: on the one hand there is the need to collect and concentrate ourselves, to resign ourselves, to feel ourselves supported and carried by a power raised above all struggle and opposition and beyond all change. But within the religious consciousness another need makes itself felt, the need of feeling that in the midst of the struggle we have a fellow-struggler at our side, a fellow-struggler who knows from his own experience what it is to suffer and meet resistance" (The Philosophy of Religion, § 54). Between these two tendencies Höffding discovers an opposition or contradiction, an "antinomy of religious feeling." But it is precisely because Christianity alone of all religions recognises both needs that it transcends the antinomy. The antinomy is indeed purely intellectual. Höffding himself says, "only when recollection, collation, and comparison are possible do we discover the opposition or the contradiction between the two tendencies." And in saying that, inasmuch as recollection, collation, and comparison are intellectual processes, he admits that the antinomy is intellectual. That it is not an antinomy of religious feeling is shown by the fact that the two needs exist, that is to say, are both felt. To say à priori that both cannot be satisfied is useless in face of the fact that those who feel them find that Christianity satisfies them.

SACRIFICE

In my last lecture I called attention to the fact that the subject of prayer has been strangely neglected by the science of religion. Religion, in whatever form it manifests itself, is essentially practical; man desires to enter into communication or into communion with his god, and in so doing he has a practical purpose in view. That purpose may be to secure a material blessing of a particular kind, such as victory in war or the enjoyment of the fruits of the earth in their due season, or the purpose may be to offer thanks for a harvest and to pray for a continuance of prosperity generally. Or the purpose of prayer may be to ask for deliverance from material evils, such as famine or plague. Or it may be to ask for deliverance from moral evils and for power to do God's will. In a word, if man had no prayer to make, the most powerful, if not the only, motive inciting him to seek communion would be wanting. Now, to some of us it may seem à priori that there is no reason why the communion thus sought in prayer should require any external rite to sanction or condition it. If that is our à priori view, we shall be the more surprised to find that in actual fact an external rite has always been felt to be essential; and that rite has always been and still is sacrifice, in one or other of its forms. Or, to put the same fact in another way, public worship has been from the beginning the condition without which private worship could not begin and without which private worship cannot continue. To any form of religion, whatever it be, it is essential, if it is to be religion, that there shall be a community of worshippers and a god worshipped. The bond which unites the worshippers with one another and with their god is religion. From the beginning the public worship in which the worshippers have united has expressed itself in rites—rites of sacrifice—and in the prayers of the community. To the end, the prayers offered are prayers to "Our Father"; and if the worshipper is spatially separated from, he is spiritually united to, his fellow-worshippers even in private prayer.

We may then recognise that prayer logically and ultimately implies sacrifice in one or other of its senses; and that sacrifice as a rite is meaningless and impossible without prayer. But if we recognise that sacrifice wherever it occurs implies prayer, then the fact that the observers of savage or barbarous rites have described the ritual acts of sacrifice, but have not observed or have neglected to report the prayers implied, will not lead us into the error of imagining that sacrifice is a rite which can exist—that it can have a religious existence—without prayer. We may attend to either, the sacrifice or to the prayer, as we may attend either to the concavity or the convexity of a curve, but we may not deny the existence and presence of the one because our attention happens to be concentrated on the other. The relation in primitive religion of the one to the other we may express by saying that prayer states the motive with which the sacrifice is made, and that sacrifice is essential to the prayer, which would not be efficacious without the sacrifice. The reason why a community can address the god which it worships is that the god is felt to be identified in some way with the community and to have its interests in his charge and care. And the rite of sacrifice is felt to make the identification more real. Prayer, again, is possible only to the god to whom the community is known; with whom it is identified, more or less; and with whom, when his help is required, the community seeks to identify itself more effectually. The means of that identification without which the prayers of the community would be ineffectual is sacrifice. The earliest form of sacrifice may probably be taken to be the sacrifice of an animal, followed by a sacrificial meal. Later, when the god has a stated place in which he is believed to manifest himself,—tree or temple,—then the identification may be effected by attaching offerings to the tree or temple. But in either case what is sought by the offering dedicated or the meal of sacrifice is in a word "incorporation." The worshippers desire to feel that they are at one with the spirit whom they worship. And the desire to experience this sense of union is particularly strong when plague or famine makes it evident that some estrangement has taken place between the god and the community which is normally in his care and under his protection. The sacrifices and prayers that are offered in such a case obviously do not open up communication for the first time between the god and his tribe: they revive and reënforce a communion which is felt to exist already, even though temporal misfortunes, such as drought or famine, testify that it has been allowed by the tribe to become less close than it ought to be, or that it has been strained by transgressions on the part of individual members of the community. But it is not only in times of public distress that the community approaches its god with sacrifice and prayer. It so happens that the prayers offered for victory in war or for rain or for deliverance from famine are instances of prayer of so marked a character that they have forced themselves on the notice of travellers in all parts of the world, from the Eskimo to the Australian black fellows or the negroes of Africa. And it was to this class of prayers that I called your attention principally in the last lecture. But they are, when we come to think of it, essentially occasional prayers, prayers that are offered at the great crises of tribal life, when the very existence of the tribe is at stake. Such crises, however, by their very nature are not regular or normal; and it would be an error to suppose that it is only on these occasions that prayers are made by savage or barbarous peoples. If we wish to discover the earliest form of regularly recurring public worship, we must look for some regularly recurring occasion for it. One such regularly recurring occasion is harvest time, another is seed time, another is the annual ceremonial at which the boys who attain in the course of the year to the age of manhood are initiated into the secrets or "mysteries" of the tribe. These are the chief and perhaps the only regularly recurring occasions of public worship as distinguished from the irregular crises of war, pestilence, drought, and famine which affect the community as a whole, and from the irregular occasions when the individual member of the community prays for offspring or for delivery from sickness or for success in the private undertaking in which he happens to be engaged.

Of the regularly recurring occasions of public worship I will select, to begin with, the rites which are associated with harvest time. And I will do so partly because the science of religion provides us with very definite particulars both as to the sacrifices and as to the prayers which are usually made on these occasions; and partly because the prayers that are made are of a special kind and throw a fresh light on the nature of the communion that the tribe seeks to effect by means of the sacrificial offering.

At Saa, in the Solomon Islands, yams are offered, and the person offering them cries in a loud voice, "This is yours to eat" (Frazer, G. B.^2, II, 465). In the Society Islands the formula is, "Here, Tari, I have brought you something to eat" (ib., 469). In Indo-China, the invitation is the same: "Taste, O goddess, these first-fruits which have just been reaped" (ib., 325). There are no actually expressed words of thanks in these instances; but we may safely conjecture that the offerings are thank-offerings and that the feeling with which the offerings are made is one of gratitude and thankfulness. Thus in Ceram we are told that first-fruits are offered "as a token of gratitude" (ib., 463). On the Niger the Onitsha formula is explicit: "I thank God for being permitted to eat the new yam" (ib., 325). At Tjumba in the East Indies, "vessels filled with rice are presented as a thank-offering to the gods" (ib., 462). The people of Nias on these occasions offer thanks for the blessings bestowed on them (ib., 463). By a very natural transition of thought and feeling, thankfulness for past favours leads to prayer for the continuance of favour in the future. Thus in Tana, in the New Hebrides, the formula is: "Compassionate father! here is some food for you; eat it; be kind to us on account of it" (ib., 464); while the Basutos say: "Thank you, gods; give us bread to-morrow also" (ib., 459); and in Tonga the prayers made at the offering of first-fruits implore the protection of the gods, and beseech them for welfare generally, though in especial for the fruits of the earth (ib., 466).

The prayers of primitive man which I quoted in my last lecture were in the nature of petitions or requests, as was natural and indeed inevitable in view of the fact that they were preferred on occasions when the tribe was in exceptional distress and required the aid of the gods on whose protection the community relied. But the prayers which I have just quoted are not in their essence petitions or requests, even though in some cases they tend to become so. They are essentially prayers of thanksgiving and the offerings made are thank-offerings. Thus our conception of primitive prayer must be extended to include both mental attitudes—that of thankfulness for past or present blessings as well as the hope of blessings yet to come. And inasmuch as sacrifice is the concomitant of prayer, we must recognise that sacrificial offerings also serve as the expression of both mental attitudes. And we must note that in the regularly recurring form of public or tribal worship with which we are now dealing the dominant feeling to which expression is given is that of thankfulness. The tribe seeks for communion with its god for the purpose of expressing its thanks. Even the savage who simply says, "Here, Tari, I have brought you something to eat," or, still more curtly, "This is yours to eat," is expressing thanks, albeit in savage fashion. And the means which the savage adopts for securing that communion which he seeks to renew regularly with the tribal god is a sacrificial meal, of which the god and his worshippers partake. Throughout the whole ceremony, whether we regard the spoken words or the acts performed, there is no suggestion of magic and no possibility of twisting the ceremony into a piece of magic intended to produce some desired result or to exercise any constraint over the powers to which the ceremony is addressed. The mental attitude is that of thankfulness.

Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dissociate from the first-fruits ceremonials which I have described the ceremonies observed by Australian black fellows on similar occasions. And it is also impossible to overlook the differences between the ceremony in Australia and the ceremony elsewhere. In Australia, as elsewhere, when the time of year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating, a ceremony has to be performed before custom permits the food to be eaten freely. In Australia, as elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a sacramental meal, has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god of the community is expressly invited to partake of the sacramental meal, even though he be not mentioned by name and though the invitation take the curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no words whatever are spoken; the person who performs the ceremony performs it indeed with every indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly and sparingly, that is to say formally and because the eating is a matter of ritual, but no reference is made by him so far as we know, to any god. How then are we to explain the absence of any such reference? There seems to me to be only one explanation which is reasonably possible. It is that in the Australian ceremony, which would be perfectly intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony as it occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god who is or was invited to partake of the first-fruits has in the process of time and, we must add, in the course of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The invitation may never have been more ample than the curt form, "This is yours to eat." Even in the absence of any verbal invitation whatever, a gesture may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the mind and was implied by the act of the savage performing the ceremony. Words may not have been felt necessary to explain what every person present at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite. But in the absence of any verbal formula whatever the purpose and meaning of the rite would be apt to pass out of mind, to evaporate, even though custom maintained, as it does in Australia to this day maintain, the punctual and punctilious performance of the outward ceremony. I suggest, therefore, that in Australia, as elsewhere, the solemn eating of the first-fruits has been a sacramental meal of which both the god and his worshippers were partakers. The alternative is to my mind much less probable: it is to use the Australian ceremony as it now exists to explain the origin of the ceremony as we find it elsewhere. In Australia it is not now apparently associated with the worship of any god; therefore it may be argued in other countries also it was not originally part of the worship of any god either. If, then, it was not an act of public worship originally, how are we to understand it? The suggestion is that the fruits of the earth or the animals which become the food of man are, until they become fit for eating, regarded as sacred or taboo, and therefore may not be eaten. That suggestion derives some support from the fact that in Australia anything that is eaten may be a totem and being a totem is taboo. But if it is thus sacred, then in order to be eaten it must be "desacralised," the taboo must be taken off. And it is suggested that that precisely is what is effected by the ceremonial eating of the totem by the headman of the totem clan: the totem is desacralised by the mere fact that it is formally and ceremonially eaten by the headman, after which it may be consumed by others as an ordinary article of food. But this explanation of the first-fruits ceremony is based upon an assumption which is contrary to the facts of the case as it occurs in Australia. It assumes that the plant or the animal until desacralised is taboo to all members of the tribe, and that none of them can eat it until it has been desacralised by the ceremonial eating. But the assumption is false; the plant or animal is sacred and taboo only to members of the clan whose totem it is. It is not sacred to the vast majority of the tribe, for they have totems of their own; to them it is not sacred or taboo, they may kill it—and they do—without breaking any taboo. The ceremonial eating of the first-fruits raises no taboo as far as the tribe generally is concerned, for the plant or animal is not taboo to them. As far as the tribe generally is concerned, no process of desacralisation takes place and none is effected by the ceremonial eating. It is the particular totem group alone which is affected by the ceremony; and the inference which it seems to me preferable to draw is that the ceremonial eating of the first-fruits is, or rather has been, in Australia what it is elsewhere, viz. an instance of prayer and sacrifice in which the worshippers of a god are brought into periodic—in this case annual—communion with their god. The difference between the Australian case and others seems to be that in the other cases the god who partakes of the first-fruits is the god of the whole community, while in Australia he is the god of the particular totem group and is analogous to the family gods who are worshipped elsewhere, even where there is a tribal or national god to be worshipped as well.

We are then inclined, for these and other reasons, to explain the ceremonial eating of the totem plant or animal in Australia by the analogy of the ceremonial eating of first-fruits elsewhere, and to regard the ceremony as being in all cases an act of worship, in which at harvest time the worshippers of a god seek communion with him by means of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving. But if we take this view of the sacrifice and prayers offered at harvest time, we shall be inclined to regard the rites which are performed at seed time, or the period analogous to it, as being also possibly, in part, of a religious character. In the case of agricultural peoples it is beyond doubt that some of the ceremonies are religious in character: where the food plant is itself regarded as a deity or the mode in which a deity is manifested, not only may there be at harvest time a sacramental meal in which, as amongst the Aztecs, the deity is formally "communicated" to his worshippers, but at seed time sacrifice and prayer may be made to the deity. Such a religious ceremony, whatever be the degree of civilisation or semicivilisation which has been reached by those who observe the ceremony, does not of course take the place of the agricultural operations which are necessary if the fruits are to be produced in due season. And the combination of the religious rites and the agricultural operations does not convert the agricultural operations into magical operations, or prove that the religious rites are merely pieces of magic intended to constrain the superior power of the deity concerned. Indeed, if among the operations performed at seed time we find some that from the point of view of modern science are perfectly ineffectual, as vain as eating tiger to make you bold, we shall be justified in regarding them as pieces of primitive science, eventually discarded indeed in the progress of advancing knowledge, but originally practised (on the principle that like produces like) as the natural means of producing the effect desired. If we so regard them, we shall escape the error of considering them to be magical; and we shall have no difficulty in distinguishing them from the religious rites which may be combined with them. Further, where harvest time is marked by the offering of sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving, we may not unreasonably take it that the religious rites observed at seed time or the period analogous to it are in the nature of sacrifice and prayers addressed to the appropriate deity to beseech him to favour the growth of the plant or animal in question. In a word, the practice of giving thanks to a god at harvest time for the harvest creates a reasonable presumption that prayer is offered to him at seed time; and if thanks are given at a period analogous to harvest time by a people like the Australian black fellows, who have no domesticated plants or animals, prayers of the nature of petitions may be offered by them at the period analogous to seed time.

The deity to whom prayers are offered at the one period and thanksgiving is made at the other may be, as in the case of the Aztec Xilonen, or the Hindoo Maize-mother, the spirit of the plant envisaged as a deity; or may be, not a "departmental" deity of this kind, but a supreme deity having power over all things. But when we turn from the regularly recurring acts of public worship connected with seed time and harvest to the regularly recurring ceremonies at which the boys of a tribe are initiated into the duties and rights of manhood, it is obvious that the deity concerned in them, even if we assume (as is by no means necessary) that he was originally "departmental" and at first connected merely with the growth of a plant or animal, must be regarded at the initiation ceremonies as a god having in his care all the interests of that tribe of which the boys to be initiated are about to become full members. Unmistakable traces of such a deity are found amongst the Australian black fellows in the "father of all," "the all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. The worship of the "all-father" is indeed now of a fragmentary kind; but it fortunately happens that in the case of one tribe, the Euahlayi, we have evidence, rescued by Mrs. Langloh Parker, to show that prayer is offered to Byamee; the Euahlayi pray to him for long life, because they have kept his law. The nature of Byamee's law may safely be inferred from the fact that at this festival, both amongst the Euahlayi and other Australians, the boys who are being initiated are taught the moral laws or the customary morality of the tribe. But though prayers are still offered by the Euahlayi and may have at one time been offered by all the Australian tribes, there is no evidence at present to show that the prayer is accompanied by a sacrifice, as is customary amongst tribes whose worship has not disintegrated so much as is the case amongst the Australians.

The ceremonies by which boys are admitted to the status of manhood are, probably amongst all the peoples of the earth who observe them, of a religious character, for the simple reason that the community to which the boy is admitted when he attains the age of manhood is a community, united together by religious bonds as a community worshipping the same god or gods; and it is to the worship and the service of these gods that he is admitted. But the ceremonies themselves vary too much to allow of our drawing from them any valuable or important conclusion as to the nature and import of sacrifice as a religious institution. On the other hand, the ceremonies observed at harvest time, or the analogous period, have, wherever they occur, such marked similarity among themselves, and the institution of prayer and sacrifice is such a prominent feature in them, that the evidence they afford must be decisive for us in attempting to form a theory of sacrifice. Nor can we dissociate the ceremonies observed in spring from the harvest ceremonies; as Dr. Frazer remarks (G. B., II, 190), "Plainly these spring and harvest customs are based on the same ancient modes of thought and form parts of the same primitive heathendom." What, then, are these "ancient modes of thought" and what the primitive customs based upon them? We may, I think, classify them in four groups. If we are to take first those instances in which the "ancient mode of thought" is most clearly expressed—whether because they are the most fully developed or because they retain the ancient mode most faithfully and with the least disintegration—we must turn to ancient Mexico and Peru. In Mexico a paste idol or dough image of the god was made; the priest hurled a dart into its breast; and this was called the killing of the god, "so that his body might be eaten." The dough image was broken and the pieces were given in the manner of a communion to the people, "who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence, as it was an admirable thing," says Father Acosta, "saying that they did eat the flesh and bones of God." Or, again, an image of the goddess Chicomecoatl was made of dough and exhibited by the priest, saying, "This is your god." All kinds of maize, beans, etc., were offered to it and then were eaten in the temple "in a general scramble, take who could." In Peru ears of maize were dressed in rich garments and worshipped as the Mother of the Maize; or little loaves of maize mingled with the blood of sheep were made; the priest gave to each of the people a morsel of these loaves, "and all did receive and eat these pieces," and prayed that the god "would show them favour, granting them children and happy years and abundance and all that they required." In this, the first group of instances, it is plain beyond all possibility of gainsaying that the spring and harvest customs consist of the worship of a god, of sacrifice and prayers to him, and of a communion which bound the worshippers to one another and to him.

Our second group of instances consists of cases in which the corn or dough or paste is not indeed made into the form or image of a god, but, as Dr. Frazer says (G. B. II, 318), "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is, as the body of the corn spirit." The spirit thus worshipped may not yet have acquired a proper name; the only designation used may have been such a one as the Hindoo Bhogaldai, meaning simply Cotton-mother. Indeed, even amongst the Peruvians, the goddess had not yet acquired a proper name, but was known only as the Mother of the Maize. But precisely because the stage illustrated in our second group of instances is not so highly developed as in Mexico or Peru it is much more widely spread. It is found in the East Indian island of Euro, amongst the Alfoors of Minahassa, in the Celebes, in the Neilgherry Hills of South India, in the Hindoo Koosh, in Indo-China, on the Niger, amongst the Zulus and the Pondos, and amongst the Creek, Seminole, and Natchez Indians (ib. 321-342). In this, the second group of instances, then, though the god may have no special, proper, name, and though no image of him is made out of the dough or paste, still "the new corn is itself eaten sacramentally, that is as the body of the corn spirit"; by means of the sacramental eating, of sacrifice and prayer, communion between the god and his worshippers is renewed and maintained.

The third group of instances consists of the harvest customs of northern Europe—the harvest supper and the rites of the Corn-mother or the Corn-maiden or the Kern Baby. It can scarcely be contended that these rites and customs, so far as they survive at the present day, retain, if they ever had, any religious value; they are performed as a matter of tradition and custom and not because any one knows why they are performed. But that they originally had a meaning—even though now it has evaporated—cannot be doubted. Nor can it be doubted that the meaning, if it is to be recovered, must be recovered by means of the comparative method. And, if the comparative method is to be applied, the Corn-mother of northern Europe cannot be dissociated from the Maize-mother of ancient Peru. But if we go thus far, then we must, with Dr. Frazer (ib. 288), recognise "clearly the sacramental character of the harvest-supper," in which, "as a substitute for the real flesh of the divine being, bread and dumplings are made and eaten sacramentally." Thus, once more, harvest customs testify in northern Europe, as elsewhere, to the fact that there was once a stated, annual, period at which communion between the god and his worshipper was sought by prayer and sacrifice.

The North-European harvest customs are further interesting and important because, if they are clearly connected on the one hand with the groups of instances already given, they are also connected on the other with the group to which we have yet to call attention. Thus far the wheat or maize, if not eaten in the form of little loaves or cakes, has been made into a dough image, or else the ears of maize have been dressed in rich garments to indicate that they represent the Mother of the Maize; and in Europe also both forms of symbolism are found. But in northern Europe, the corn spirit is also believed to be manifested, Dr. Frazer says, in "the animal which is present in the corn and is caught or killed in the last sheaf." The animal may be a wolf, dog, cock, hare, cat, goat, bull, cow, horse, or pig. "The animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of by the harvesters," and, Dr. Frazer says, "these customs bring out clearly the sacramental character of the harvest supper." Now, this manifestation of the corn spirit in animal form is not confined to Europe; it occurs for instance in Guinea and in all the provinces and districts of China. And it is important as forming a link between the agricultural and the pre-agricultural periods; in Dr. Frazer's words, "hunting and pastoral tribes, as well as agricultural peoples, have been in the habit of killing their gods" (ib. 366). In the pastoral period, as well as in agricultural times, the god who is worshipped by the tribe and with whom the tribe seeks communion by means of prayer and sacrifice, may manifest himself in animal form, and "the animal is slain and its flesh and blood are partaken of."