sense of its
community with Nature, and of the Common life among its members--a sense
so intimate and fundamental that it was hardly aware of itself (any more
than the fish is aware of the sea in which it lives), but yet was really
the matrix of tribal thought and the spring of tribal action. It
was this sense of unity which was destined by the growth of
SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS to come to light and evidence in the shape of all
manner of rituals and ceremonials; and by the growth of the IMAGINATIVE
INTELLECT to embody itself in the figures and forms of all manner of
deities.

Let us examine into this a little more closely. A lark soaring in the
eye of the sun, and singing rapt between its "heaven and home" realizes
no doubt in actual fact all that those two words mean to us; yet
its realization is quite subconscious. It does not define its own
experience: it FEELS but it does not THINK. In order to come to the
stage of THINKING it would perhaps be necessary that the lark should
be exiled from the earth and the sky, and confined in a cage. Early Man
FELT the great truths and realities of Life--often I believe more purely
than we do--but he could not give form to his experience. THAT stage
came when he began to lose touch with these realities; and it showed
itself in rites and ceremonials. The inbreak of self-consciousness
brought OUT the facts of his inner life into ritualistic and afterwards
into intellectual forms.

Let me give examples. For a long time the Tribe is all in all; the
individual is completely subject to the 'Spirit of the Hive'; he
does not even THINK of contravening it. Then the day comes when
self-interest, as apart from the Tribe, becomes sufficiently strong to
drive him against some tribal custom. He breaks the tabu; he eats the
forbidden apple; he sins against the tribe, and is cast out. Suddenly he
finds himself an exile, lonely, condemned and deserted. A horrible sense
of distress seizes him--something of which he had no experience before.
He tries to think about it all, to understand the situation, but
is dazed and cannot arrive at any conclusion. His one NECESSITY is
Reconciliation, Atonement. He finds he cannot LIVE outside of and
alienated from his tribe. He makes a Sacrifice, an offering to his
fellows, as a seal of sincerity--an offering of his own bodily suffering
or precious blood, or the blood of some food-animal, or some valuable
gift or other--if only he may be allowed to return. The offerin