[Footnote 1: Jevons: _An Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 17.]

The very food of primitive man was to him as precarious as
it was essential. His life was practically at the mercy of wind
and rain and sun. His food and shelter were desperately
lucky chances. Not having attained as yet to a conception of
the impersonality of Nature, he regarded these forces which
helped and hindered him as friendly and alien powers which
it was in the imperative interests of his own welfare to placate
and propitiate. It was in this urgent sense of helplessness and
need that there were developed the two outstanding modes of
communication with the supernatural, _sacrifice_ and _prayer_.

Primitive man conceived his universe to be governed by
essentially human powers; powers, of course, on a grand scale,
but human none the less, with the same weaknesses, moods,
and humors as human beings themselves. They could be
flattered and cajoled; they could be bribed and paid; they
could be moved to tenderness, generosity, and pity. "Holiness,"
says Socrates in one of Plato's dialogues, "is an art in
which gods and men do business with each other, ... Sacrifice
is giving to the gods, prayer is asking of them."[2] In
Frazer's _Golden Bough_ one finds the remarkably diverse
sacrificial rites by which men have sought to win the favor of the
divine. Primitive man believed literally that the universe
was governed by superhuman personal powers; he believed
literally that these are human in their motives. He believed
in consequence that sacrifices to the gods would help him to
control the controlling powers of Nature for his own good,
just as modern man believes that an application of the laws of
electricity and mechanics will help him to control the natural
world for his own purposes. The sacrifices of primitive man
were immensely practical in character; they were made at the
crucial moments and pivotal crises of life, at sowing and at
harvest time, at the initiation of the young into the responsibilities
of maturity, at times of pestilence, famine, or danger.
The gods were given the choice part of a meal; the prize calf;
in some cases, human sacrifices; the sacrifice, moreover, of the
beautiful and best. The chief sacrificial rites of almost all
primitive peoples are connected with food, the sustainer, and
procreation or birth, the perpetuator, of life.

[Footnote 2: See Plato's _Euthyphro_.]

As Jane Harrison puts it:

If man the i