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agricultural institutions, there is nothing more to be said. But they leave out of consideration a whole set of connected institutions. Readers of Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ are now in possession of facts which it would take a very long time to explain. They see that side by side with agricultural economics is agricultural religion, of great rudeness and barbarity, of considerable complexity, and bearing the stamp of immense antiquity. The same villagers who were the observers of those rules of economics which are thought to be due to Roman origin were also observers of ritual and usages which are known to be savage in theory and practice. Must we, then, say that all this ritual and usage are Roman? or must we go on ignoring them as elements in the argument as to the origin of agricultural institutions? One or the other of these alternatives must, I contend, be accepted by the inquirer. Because the State has chosen or been compelled for political reasons to lift up peasant economics into manorial legal rules, thus forcibly divorcing this portion of peasant life from its natural associations, there is no reason why students should fix upon this arbitrary proceeding as the point at which to begin their examination into the origin of village agriculture. Manorial tenants pay their dues to the lord, lot out their lands in intermixed strips, cultivate in common, and perform generally all those interesting functions of village life with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a scarcely disguised ritual, still worship deities which there is little difficulty in recognising as the counterparts of those religious goddesses of India who are worshipped and venerated by non-Aryan votaries. Christianity has not followed the lead of politics, and lifted all this portion of peasant agricultural life into something that is religious and definite. And because it remains sanctioned by tradition, we must, in considering origins, take it into account in conjunction with those economic practices which have been unduly emphasised in the history of village institutions. In India primitive economics and re
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