nary life, it was still
retained in holy and especially in piacular functions; ... examples
are afforded by the Dionysiac mysteries and other Greek rites, and by
almost every rude religion; while in later cults the old rite
survives at least in the religious use of animal masks."[84]{37}

If we accept the animal-worship and sacrificial communion theory, many a
Christmas custom will carry us back in thought to a stage of religion far
earlier than the Greek and Roman classics or the Celtic and Teutonic
mythology of the conversion period: we shall be taken back to a time
before men had come to have anthropomorphic gods, when they were not
conscious of their superiority to the beasts of the field, but regarded
these beings, mysterious in their actions, extraordinary in their powers,
as incarnations of potent spirits. At this stage of thought, it would
seem, there were as yet no definite divinities with personal names and
characters, but the world was full of spirits immanent in animal or plant
or chosen human being, and able to pass from one incarnation to another.
Or indeed it may be that animal sacrifice originated at a stage of
religion before the idea of definite "spirits" had arisen, when man was
conscious rather of a vague force like the Melanesian _mana_, in himself
and in almost everything, and "constantly trembling on the verge of
personality."{38} "_Mana_" better than "god" or "spirit" may express
that with which the partaker in the communal feast originally sought
contact. "When you sacrifice," to quote some words of Miss Jane Harrison,
"you build as it were a bridge between your _mana_, your will, your
desire, which is weak and impotent, and |177| that unseen outside
_mana_ which you believe to be strong and efficacious. In the fruits of
the earth which grow by some unseen power there is much _mana_; you want
that _mana_. In the loud-roaring bull and the thunder is much _mana_; you
want that _mana_. It would be well to get some, to eat a piece of that
bull raw, but it is dangerous, not a thing to do unawares alone; so you
consecrate the first-fruits, you sacrifice the bull and then in safety
you--communicate."{39} "Sanctity"--the quality of awfulness and
mystery--rather than divinity or personality, may have been what
primitive man saw in the beasts and birds which he venerated in "their
silent, aloof, goings, in the perfection of their limited doings."{40}
When we use the word "spirit" in connect