rom the earth, the forest, the sea, or the
river. On the basis of these elementary facts, the anthropologist then
asks us to accept the conclusion that the main beliefs and acts of
primitive man are intimately, and indeed almost solely, connected with
his food supply; and having first, by a deductive process of reasoning,
established a high degree of probability that this conclusion is
correct, he proceeds to confirm its accuracy by reasoning inductively
and showing that a similarity, too marked to be the result of mere
accident or coincidence, exists in the practices which primitive man has
adopted, throughout the world, and which can only be explained on the
assumption that by methods, differing indeed in detail but substantially
the same in principle, endeavours have been, and still are being, made
to secure an identical object, viz. to obtain food and thus to sustain
life. The various methods adopted both in the past and the present are
invariably associated in one form or another with the invocation of
magical influences. The primitive savage, Miss Harrison says, "is a man
of action." He does not pray. He acts. If he wishes for sun or wind or
rain, "he summons his tribe, and dances a sun dance or a wind dance or a
rain dance." If he wants bear's flesh to eat, he does not pray to his
god for strength to outwit or to master the bear, but he rehearses his
hunt in a bear dance. If he notices that two things occur one after the
other, his untrained intellect at once jumps to the conclusion that one
is the cause and the other the effect. Thus in Australia--a specially
fertile field for anthropological research, which has recently been
explored with great thoroughness and intelligence by Messrs. Spencer and
Gillen--the cry of the plover is frequently heard before rain falls.
Therefore, when the natives wish for rain they sing a rain song in which
the cry of that bird is faithfully imitated.

Before alluding to the special point which Miss Harrison deals with in
_Ancient Art and Ritual_, it will be as well to glance at the views
which she sets forth in her previous illuminating treatise entitled
_Themis_. The former is in reality a continuation of the latter work.
The view heretofore generally entertained as regards the anthropomorphic
gods of Greece has been that the conception of the deity preceded the
adoption of the ritual. Moreover, one school of anthropologists ably
represented by Professor Ridgeway, has maintained th