Note 10 — Front matter

A pantomimic prayer or symbolic representation by which man shows his wishes to the gods by acting out what he desires instead of verbally petitioning them. This ceremony comes fairly within a definition of religious rites found in Tylor’s Primitive Culture (p. 363): “In part they [religious rites] are expressions and symbolic performances, the dramatic utterance of religious thought, the gesture language of theology.” The interpretation of savage rites as a sign language to the gods, and the relation of the altar to primitive ceremony have been ably discussed by Major Powell, to whom the writer is greatly indebted for a proper understanding of the significance of primitive altars. (See American Anthropologist, N. S., vol. I, p. 26 et seq.)