The Classification of Rites.—More than one basis of division has suggested itself. From the sociological point of view perhaps the most important distinction in use is that between public and private rites. Whilst the former essentially belong to religion as existing to further the common weal, the latter have from the earliest times an ambiguous character and tend to split into those which are licit—"sacraments," as they may be termed—and those which are considered anti-social in tendency, and are consequently put beyond the pale of religion and assigned to the "black art" of magic. Or the sociologist may prefer to correlate rites with the forms of social organization—the tribe, the phratry, the clan, the family and so on.
Another interesting contrast (seeing how primary a function of religion it is to establish a calendar of sacred seasons) is that between periodic and occasional rites—one that to a certain extent falls into line with the previous dichotomy. A less fruitful method of classing rites is that which arranges them according to their inner meaning. As we have seen, such meaning is usually acquired ex post facto, and typical forms of rite are used for many differ ent purposes; so that attempts to differentiate are likely to beget more equivocations than they clear up. The fact is that compara tive religion must be content to regard all its classifications alike as pieces of mere scaffolding serving temporary purposes of construction.
help can also blast if approached improperly and without due precautions. Taboos are such precautions, abstinences prompted, not by simple dread or dislike, but always by some sort of respect as felt towards that which in other circumstances or in other form has healing virtue. Thus the negative attitude of the ob server of taboo involves a positive attitude of reverence from which it becomes in practice scarcely distinguishable. To keep a fast, for instance, is looked upon as a direct act of worship. It must be noted, too, that, whereas taboo as at first conceived be longs to the magico-religious circle of ideas, implying a quasi physical transference of sacredness from that having it to one not fit to receive it, it is very easily reinterpreted as an obligation imposed by the deity on his worshippers.
The law observed by a primitive religious community abounds in negative precepts, and if early religion tends to be a religion of fear it is because the taboo-breaker provides the most palpable objective for human and divine sanctions. In the higher religions, to be pure remains amongst the most laudable of aspirations, and, even though the ceremonial aversion of a former age has become moralized, and a purity of heart set up as the ideal, it is on "vir tues of omission" that stress is apt to be laid, so that a timorous propriety is too often preferred to a forceful grappling with the problems of life. There are signs, however, that the religious consciousness has at length come to appreciate the fact that the function of routine in religion as elsewhere is to clear the way for action.