as only by
religious rites that the aleatory element in the struggle for existence
could be controlled. The notions of ghosts, demons, another world, etc.,
were all fantastic. They lacked all connection with facts, and were
arbitrary constructions put upon experience. They were poetic and
developed by poetic construction and imaginative deduction. The nexus
between them and events was not cause and effect, but magic. They
therefore led to delusive deductions in regard to life and its meaning,
which entered into subsequent action as guiding faiths, and imperative
notions about the conditions of success. The authority of religion and
that of custom coalesced into one indivisible obligation. Therefore the
simple statement of experiment and expediency in the first paragraph
above is not derived directly from actual cases, but is a product of
analysis and inference. It must also be added that vanity and ghost fear
produced needs which man was as eager to satisfy as those of hunger or
the family. Folkways resulted for the former as well as for the latter
(see sec. 9).

+7. All origins are lost in mystery.+ No objection can lie against this
postulate about the way in which folkways began, on account of the
element of inference in it. All origins are lost in mystery, and it
seems vain to hope that from any origin the veil of mystery will ever be
raised. We go up the stream of history to the utmost point for which we
have evidence of its course. Then we are forced to reach out into the
darkness upon the line of direction marked by the remotest course of
the historic stream. This is the way in which we have to act in regard
to the origin of capital, language, the family, the state, religion, and
rights. We never can hope to see the beginning of any one of these
things. Use and wont are products and results. They had antecedents. We
never can find or see the first member of the series. It is only by
analysis and inference that we can form any conception of the
"beginning" which we are always so eager to find.

+8. Spencer on primitive custom.+ Spencer[4] says that "guidance by
custom, which we everywhere find amongst rude peoples, is the sole
conceivable guidance at the outset." Custom is the product of concurrent
action through time. We find it existent and in control at the extreme
reach of our investigations. Whence does it begin, and how does it come
to be? How can it give guidance "at the outset"? All mass actions seem
to b