It is hard to find terms general enough to cover dealings with the sacred that range from the manipulation of an almost inanimate type of power to intercourse modelled on that between man and man. Primitive religion, however, resorts to either way of ap proach so indifferently as to prove that there is little or no aware ness of an inconsistency of attitude. The radical contrast be tween mechanical and spiritual religion, though fundamental for modern theology, is alien to the primitive point of view, and is therefore inappropriate to the purposes of anthropological descrip tion. (I) Acquisition. Mystic power may be regarded as innate so far as skill, luck or queerness are signs and conditions of its presence. On the whole, however, savage society tends to regard it as something acquired, the product of acts and abstinences hav ing a traditional character for imparting magico-religious virtue. An external symbol in the shape of a ceremony or cult-object is of great assistance to the dim eye of primitive faith. Again, the savage universe is no preserve of man, but is an open field wherein human and non-human activities of all sorts compete on more or less equal terms, yet so that a certain measure of pre dominance may be secured by a judicious combination of forces. (2) Concentration. Hence the magico-religious society or indi vidual practitioner piles ceremony on ceremony, name of power on name of power, relic on relic, to consolidate the forces within reach and assume direction thereof. The transmissibility of the sacred ensures the fusion of powers drawn from all sources, how ever disparate. (3) Induction. It is necessary, however, as it were, to bring this force to a head. This would appear to be the essential significance of sacrifice, where a number of sacred opera tions and instruments are made to discharge their efficacy into the victim as into a vat, so that a blessing-yielding, evil-neutraliz ing force of highest attainable potency is obtained (see H. Hubert and M. Mauss, "Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice" in L'Annee sociologique, ii.). (4) Renovation. An important motif in magico-religious ritual, which may not have been without effect on the development of sacrifice, is, as Frazer's main thesis in The Golden Bough asserts, the imparting of reproductive energy to animals, plants and man himself, its cessation being suggested by such phenomena as old age and the fall of the year. To con centrate, induce and renovate are, however, but aspects of one process of acquisition by the transfusion of a transmissible energy. (5) Demission. Hubert and Mauss show in their penetrating analysis of sacrifice that after the rite has been brought to its culminating point there follows as a pendant a ceremony of re entry into ordinary life, the idea of which is preserved in the Christian formula Ite, missa est. (6) Insulation. Such deposition of sacredness is but an aspect of the wider method that causes a ring-f cnce to be erected round the sacred to ward off casual trespassers at once in their own interest and to prevent con tamination. We see here a natural outcome of religious awe sup ported by the spirit of esotericism, and by a sense of the need for an expert handling of that which is so potent for good or ill. (7) Direction. This last consideration brings to notice the fact that throughout magico-religious practice of all kinds the human operator retains a certain control over the issue. In the number less transitions that, whilst connecting, separate the spell and the prayer we observe as the accompaniment of every mood from extreme imperiousness to extreme humility an abiding will and desire to help the action out. Even "Thy will be done" preserves the echo of a direction, and, needless to say, this is hardly a form of primitive address. At the bottom is the vague feeling that it is man's own self-directed mysterious energy that is at work, however much it needs to be reinforced from without. Meanwhile, tradition strictly prescribes the ways and means of such reinforcement, so that religion becomes largely a matter of sacred lore; and the expert director of rites, who is likewise usually at this stage the leader of society, comes more and more to be needed as an intermediary between the lay portion of the community and the sacred powers.
Hitherto our account of primitive religion has had to move on somewhat abstract lines. His religion is, however, anything but an abstraction to the savage, and stands rather for the whole of his concrete life so far as it is penetrated by a spirit of earnest endeavour. The end and result of primitive religion is, in a word, the consecration of life, the stimulation of the will to live and to do. This bracing of the vital feeling takes place by means of imaginative appeal to the great forces man perceives stirring within him and about him, such appeal proving effective doubtless by reason of the psychological law that to conceive strongly is to imitate. Meanwhile, security against any clashing of conceptions to inhibit the tendency of the idea of an acquired "grace" to realize itself in action, is assured by the complete unanimity of public opinion, dominated as it is by an inveterate custom. To appreciate the consecrating effect of religion on primitive life we have only to look to the churinga-worship of the Central Australians (as described by Spencer and Gillen in The Native Tribes of Central Australia, [1] The Northern Tribes of Central Australia and The Arunta). Contact with these
repositories of mystic influence "makes them glad" (Nat. Tr. 165) ; it likewise makes them "good," so that they are no longer greedy or selfish (North. Tr. 266) ; it endows them with second sight (ibid.) ; it gives them confidence and success in war (Nat. Tr. 135) ; in fact, there is no end to its "strengthening" effects (ibid. n.). Or, again, we may note the earnestness and solemnity that characterize all their sacred ceremonies. The inwardness of primitive religion is, however, non-existent for those who ob serve it as uninitiated strangers ; whilst, again, it evaporates as soon as native custom breaks down under pressure of civiliza tion, when only fragments of meaningless superstition survive: for which reason travesties of primitive religion abound.
It remains to consider shortly the consecration of life in rela tion to particular categories and departments. (I) Education. Almost every tribe has its initiation ceremonies, and in many tribes adult life may almost be described as a continuous initia tion. The object of these rites is primarily to impart mystic virtue to the novice, such virtue, in the eyes of the primitive man, being always something more than social usefulness, amount ing as it does to a share in the tribal luck by means of association with all it holds sacred. Incidentally the candidate is trained to perform his duties as a tribesman, but religion presides over the course, demanding earnest endeavour of an impressionable age. (2) Government. Where society is most primitive it is most democratic, as in Australia, and magico-religious powers are pos sessed by the whole body of fully initiated males, age, however, conferring increase of sacred lore and consequently of authority; whilst even at this stage the experts tend to form an inner circle of rulers. The man with mana is bound to come to the top, both because his gifts give him a start and because his success is taken as a sign that he has the gift. A decisive "moment" in the evolu tion of chief ship is the recognition of hereditary mana, bound up as this is with the handing on of ceremonies and cult-objects. Invested, as society grows more complex, with a sanctity in creasingly superior to that of the layman, the priest-king becomes the representative of the community as repository of its luck, whilst, as controller of all sacred forces that bear thereon, he is, as Frazer puts it, "dynamical centre of the universe" (The Golden Bough [3rd ed.], iii. 1). Only when the holy man's duty to pre serve his holiness binds him hand and foot in a network of taboos does his temporal power tend to devolve on a deputy. (3) Food supply. In accordance with the principle of Renovation (see above), the root-idea of the application of religion to economics is not the extorting of boons from an unwilling nature, but rather the stimulation of the sources of life, so that all beings alike may increase and multiply. (4) Food-taking. Meanwhile, the primitive meal is always more or less of a sacrament, and there are many food-taboos, the significance of which is, however, not so much that certain foods are unclean and poisonous as that they are of special virtue and must be partaken of solemnly and with circum spection. (5) Kinship. It is hard to say whether the unit of primitive society is the tribe or the group of kinsmen. Both are forms of union that are consolidated by means of religious usages. Thus in Australia the initiation ceremonies, concerned as they partly are with marriage, always an affair between the kin-groups, are tribal, whilst the totemic rites are the prime concern of the members of the totem clans. The significance of a common name and a common blood is immensely enhanced by its association with mystic rights and duties, and the pulse of brotherhood beats faster. (6) The Family. Side by side with the kin there is always found the domestic group, but the latter institution develops fully only as the former weakens, so that the one comes largely to inherit the functions of the other, whilst the tribe too in its turn hands over certain interests. Thus in process of time birth-rites, marriage-rites, funeral-rites, not to mention subordinate ceremonies such as those of name-giving and food-taking, become domestic sacraments. (7) Sex. Woman, for certain physiological reasons, is always for primitive peoples hedged round with sanctity, whilst man does all he can to inspire awe of his powers in woman by keeping religion largely in his own hands. The result, so far as woman is concerned, is that, in company with those males who are endowed with sacredness in a more than ordinary degree, she tends as a sex to lose in freedom as much as she gains in respect. (8) Personality. Every one has his modicum of innate mana, or at least may develop it in himself by communicating with powers that can be brought into answering relation by the proper means. Nagualism, or the acquisition of a mystic guardian, is a widely distributed custom, the essence of which probably consists in the procuring of a personal name having potency. The exceptional man is recognized as having mana in a special degree, and a belief thus held at once by others and by himself is bound to stimulate his individuality. The primitive community is not so custom-bound that personality has no chance to make itself felt, and the leader of men possessed of an inner fund of inspiration is the wonder-worker who en courages all forms of social advance.