ropomorphic god approached by purely human methods of
personal entreaty and adulation.

Further, when we first come to the study of primitive religions we
expect a priori to find the same elements, though in a ruder form. We
expect to see "The heathen in his blindness bow down to wood and stone,"
but the facts that actually confront us are startlingly dissimilar.
Bowing down to wood and stone is an occupation that exists mainly in the
minds of hymn-writers. The real savage is more actively engaged. Instead
of asking a god to do what he wants done, he does it or tries to do
it himself; instead of prayers he utters spells. In a word he is busy
practising magic, and above all he is strenuously engaged in dancing
magical dances. When the savage wants rain or wind or sunshine, he does
not go to church; he summons his tribe and they dance a rain-dance or
wind-dance or sun-dance. When a savage goes to war we must not picture
his wife on her knees at home praying for the absent; instead we must
picture her dancing the whole night long; not for mere joy of heart
or to pass the weary hours; she is dancing his war-dance to bring him
victory.

Magic is nowadays condemned alike by science and by religion; it is
both useless and impious. It is obsolete, and only practised by malign
sorcerers in obscure holes and corners. Undoubtedly magic is neither
religion nor science, but in all probability it is the spiritual
protoplasm from which religion and science ultimately differentiated.
As such the doctrine of evolution bids us scan it closely. Magic may
be malign and private; nowadays it is apt to be both. But in early days
magic was as much for good as for evil; it was publicly practised for
the common weal.

The gist of magic comes out most clearly in magical dances. We think of
dancing as a light form of recreation, practised by the young from sheer
joie de vivre and unsuitable for the mature. But among the Tarahumares
(Carl Lumholtz, "Unknown Mexico", page 330, London, 1903.) in Mexico the
word for dancing, nolavoa, means "to work." Old men will reproach young
men saying "Why do you not go to work?" meaning why do you not dance
instead of only looking on. The chief religious sin of which the
Tarahumare is conscious is that he has not danced enough and not made
enough tesvino, his cereal intoxicant.

Dancing then is to the savage WORKING, DOING, and the dance is in its
origin an imitation or perhaps rather an intensification of pr