by
the community. The cult of spirits is considered below in connection
with the description of divine beings.[207]

CHAPTER III

EARLY RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES

+101+. The earliest known forms of social life are characterized by the
performance of public ceremonies, which are almost always religious.
Religion in some form enters into all the details of early life--there
is no event that is not supposed to be caused or affected by a
supernatural Power or influence. A vaguely conceived force (_mana_), an
attribute of life, is believed to reside in all things, and under
certain circumstances has to be reckoned with. Mysterious potencies in
the shape of souls, spirits, gods, or mana are held to preside over and
control all affairs--birth, sickness, death, hate and love, hunting and
war, sowing and reaping. There is no dogma except belief in this
extrahuman influence--no conception of moral effort as based on and
sanctioned by a definite moral ideal, no struggle of the sort that we
call spiritual. Religion consists of a body of practices whose authority
rests on precedent; as it is supposed they have existed from time
immemorial, they are held to be necessary to secure the well-being of
the tribe (a sufficient supply of food, or victory over enemies); to the
question why such and such things are done, the common reply of the
savage is that without them the thing desired could not be got.

+102+. In the earliest stages known to us these procedures are already
elaborate and distinct; they are generally conducted by the tribal
leaders (old men, chiefs, magicians), by whom they are handed down from
generation to generation.[208] Their precise origin is lost in the
depths of antiquity. Doubtless they arose from social needs, and their
precise forms were suggested by crude observation and reasoning.
Reflection on processes of nature, guided sometimes by fortunate or
unfortunate accidents, may have led to the establishment of methods of
procedure for gaining social and individual ends; and, as at this
formative period the whole life of the community was permeated by
religious conceptions, the procedures either were originally religious
or speedily took on a religious coloring.

+103+. Two characteristics belong to early ceremonies: they are
communal, and they are generally sacred mysteries. Whatever be the
origin of the tribal and clan institutions of society, these are
practically universal in the world as it is now kn