To address and entreat a f el low-being is a faculty as old as that of speech, and, as soon as it occurred to man to treat sacred powers as fellow-beings, assured ly there was a beginning of prayer. We are not likely to know how religion first arose, and the probability is that many springs went to feed that immense river. Thus care for the dead may well have been one amongst such separate sources. It is natural for sorrow to cry to the newly dead "Come back!" and for be reavement to add "Come back and help!" Another source is mythologic fancy, which, in answer to child-like questions : "Who made the world?" "Who made our laws?" and so on, creates "magnified non-natural men," who presently made their appear ance in ritual (for to think a thing the savage must dance it) ; whereupon personal intercourse becomes possible between such a being and the tribesmen, the more so because the supporters of law and order, the elders, associate themselves as closely as possi ble with the supreme law-giver. From Australia comes a certain amount of evidence showing that, in the two ways just mentioned, some inchoate prayer is being evolved. On the whole, the absence of prayer from the magico-religious ritual of the Australians is conspicuous. Uttered formulas abound; yet they are not forms of address, but rather self-sufficient pronouncements charged with many (q.v.). They involve a wonder-working recognized as such, the core of the mystery consisting in the supposed transformation of suggested idea into accomplished fact by means of that sug gestion itself. To the man endowed in the opinion of his fellows (and doubtless of himself) with this wonderful power of effective suggestion, the output of such power naturally represents itself as a kind of unconditional willing. When he cries "Rain, rain," or otherwise makes vivid to himself and his hearers the idea of rain, expecting that the rain will thereby be forced to come, it is as if he had said "Rain, now you must come," or simply "Rain, come!" and we find that suggestional formulas mostly assume the tone of an actual or virtual imperative, "As I do this, so let the like happen," "I do this in order that the like may happen," and so on. Now it is easy to "call spirits from the vasty deep," but they do not always come. Hence such imperatives have a tend ency to dwindle into optatives. "Let the demon of small-pox depart !" is replaced by the more humble "Grandfather Smallpox, go away !" where the affectionate appellative (employed, however, in all likelihood merely to cajole) signalizes an approach to the genuine spirit of prayer. Again, the user of suggestion conscious of his limitations will seek to supplement his mana by tapping, so to speak, whatever sources of similar power lie round about him. A notable method of borrowing power from another agency in volving mana is simply to breathe its name in connection with the spell that stands in need of reinforcement ; as the name suggests its owner, so it comes to stand for his real presence. Even the more highly developed forms of liturgical prayer tend, in the recitation of divine titles, attributes and the like to present a survival of this formalist use of potent names. (See NAME.) Prayer as a Part of Ritual.—By an exactly converse process prayer actually generates formalism, instead of growing out of it. In advanced religion, indeed, prayer is the chosen vehicle of the free spirit of worship. Its mechanism is not unduly rigid, and it is largely autonomous, being rid of subservience to other ritual factors. In more primitive ritual, however, set forms of prayer are the rule, and their function is mainly to accompany and support a ceremony the nerve of which consists in action rather than speech. Hence, suppose genuine prayer to have come into being, it is apt to degenerate into a mere piece of formalism; and yet, whereas its intrinsic meaning is dulled by repetition according to a well-known psychological law, its virtue is thereby hardly lessened for the undeveloped religious consciousness, which holds the saving grace to lie mainly in the repetition itself. But a f orm ula that depends for its efficacy on being uttered rather than on being heard is virtually indistinguishable from the purely sug gestional type of utterance, though its origin is different. A good example of a degenerated prayer-ritual comes from the Todas (see W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, ch. x.). The prayer itself tends to be slurred over, or even omitted. On the other hand, great stress is laid on a preliminary citation of names of power followed by the word idith. This at one time seems to have meant "for the sake of," carrying with it some idea of supplication; but it has now lost this connotation, seeing that it can be used not merely after the name of a god, but after that of any sacred object or incident held capable of imparting efficacy to the formula. Even the higher religions have to fight against the tendency to "vain repetitions" (often embodying a certain sacred number, e.g. three), as well as to the use of prayers as amulets, medicinal charms, and so on. Throughout we must carefully distinguish in theory, though hard in practice, between legitimate ritual under stood as such, whether integral to prayer, such as its verbal forms, or accessory, such as gestures, postures, incense, oil or what not, and the formalism of religious decay, such as generally betrays itself by its meaninglessness, by its gibberish phrases, sing-song intonation and so forth.
A small point in the history of prayer, bear ing on the subject of its relation to magic, is concerned with the custom of praying silently. Charms and words of power being supposed to possess efficacy in themselves are guarded with great secrecy by their owners, and hence, in so far as prayer verges on spell, there will be a disposition to mutter or otherwise conceal the sacred formula. Thus the prayers of the Todas already allud
ed to are in all cases uttered "in the throat," although these are public prayers, each village having a form of its own. At a later stage, when the distinction between magic and religion is more clearly recognized and an anti-social character definitely assigned to the former, on the ground that it subserves the sinister inter ests of individuals, the overt and, as it were, congregational nature of the praying comes to be insisted on as a guarantee that no magic is being employed, a notion that suffers easy translation into the view that there are more or less disreputable gods with whom private trafficking may be done on the sly. Thus, in ac cordance with the outlook of the classical period, Plato in his Laws (909-950) prohibits all possession of private shrines or performance of private rites ; "Let a man go to a temple to pray, and let anyone who pleases join with him in the prayer." Never theless, instances are not wanting amongst the Greeks of private prayers of the loftiest and the most disinterested tone (cf. L. R. Farnell, The Evolution of Religion, p. 202 seq.). Finally, in ad vanced religion, at the point at which prayer is coming to be con ceived as communion, silent adoration is sometimes thought to bring man nearest to God.
As to the moral quality of the act of prayer, this contrast between the spirit of public and private religion is fundamental for all but the most advanced forms of cult. In its public rites the community becomes con scious of common ends and a common edification. Even a very primitive people such as the Arunta of Australia behaves with the greatest solemnity at its ceremonies, and professes to be made "glad" and "strong" thereby. Of his countrymen, whom he would not trust to pray in private, Plato testifies that in the temples during the sacrificial prayers "they show an intense earn estness and with eager interest talk to the gods and beseech them" (Laws, 887). In acts of public worship at any rate, theref ore, prayer and its magico-religious congeners are at all stages re sorted to as a "means of grace," even though such grace does not constitute the expressed object of petition. Poverty of expression is apt to cloak the real spirit of primitive prayer, and the formula under which its aspirations may be summed up, namely, "Bless ings come, evils go," covers all sorts of confused notions about a grace to be acquired and an impurity to be wiped away, which, as far back as our clues take us, invite interpretations of a decidedly spiritualistic and ethical order. To explicate, however, and purge the meaning of that "strong heart" and "clean" which the savage after his fashion can wish and ask for, remained the task of the higher and more self-conscious types of religion. A favourite con trast for which there is more to be said is that drawn between the magico-religious spell-ritual, that says in effect, "My will be done," and the spirit of "Thy will be done" that breathes through the highest forms of worship. Such resignation in the face of the divine will and providence is, however, not altogether beyond the horizon of primitive faith, as witness the following prayer of the khonds of Orissa : "We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to us." (Tylor, Prim. Culture, 4. 369). At this point prayer by a supreme paradox virtually extinguishes itself, since in becoming an end in itself, a means of contemplative devotion and of mystic communing with God, it ceases to have logical need for the petitionary form. Thus on the face of it there is something like a return to the self-suffi cient utterance of antique religion ; but, in reality, there is all the difference in the world between a suggestion directed outwardly in the fruitless attempt to conjure nature without first obeying her, and one directed towards the inner man so as to establish the peace of God within the heart.
For prayer from the comparative standpoint: E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, ch. xviii. (19°3) ; C. Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion (Gifford lectures, lect. 6) (1897) ; F. Max Muller, "On Ancient Prayers," in Semitic Studies in Memory of Rev. Dr. Alexander Kohut (1897) ; L. R. Farnell, The Evolution of Religion, lect. 4 (19o5). For prayer in relation to magic: R. R. Marett, "From Spell to Prayer," in Folk-Lore (June 1904) ; W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic (5900). Degeneration of prayer: W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, ch. x. (19°6). Use of the name of power; F. Giesebrecht, Die alttestamentliche Schdtzung des Gottesnamens (Dpoi) ; W. Heitmiiller, Im Namen Jesu (1903). Silent prayer: S. Sudhaus, "Lautes und leises Beten" in Archiv fur Religionswissenschaft, 185 seq. (1906). Beginnings of prayer in Australia: A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia, 394, cf. 546 (5904) K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, 79 seq. (19°5) ; the evidence discussed in Man. 2, 42, 72 (1907). Prayer and spell in North American religion: W. Matthews, "The Prayer of a Navajo Shaman," in American Anthropologist, i.; idem, "The Mountain Chant; a Navajo Ceremony," in Fifth Report of Bureau of American Ethnology. Greek prayer: C. Ausfeld, De graecorum precationibus quaestiones (1903). Christian prayer: E. von der Goltz, Das Gebet in der iiltesten Christenheit (19oi) ; id., Tischge bete und Abendmahlsgebete (19o5) ; 0. Dibelius, Das Vaterunser: Umrisse zu einer Geschichte des Gebets in der alten and mittleren Kirche (1903) ; T. K. Cheyne, "Prayer," in Ency. Bib. (1902) ; W. G. Procter, The Principles and Practice of Prayer (1927) ; W. H. Frere, The Principles of Religious Ceremonial (2nd ed.,, 1928). (See also