powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 717
them of wood and painting them with brilliant colors, or they make their bodies of fragments of cloth and decorate them with feathers. The birds are then placed upon perches and the perches placed upon the altar. Many are the devices to repre- sent animal food.
The similitudes and associations which are suggested to the savage mind are utilized in this manner in many a quaint way. The " correspondences " which the sylvan mind discovers and invents to utilize in prayer speech would delight the heart of the mystic.
Having provided an altar with its holy objects, the devout shaman pours forth his praises to the ghostly divinities and invokes their aid in controlling the sunshine and the storm, chanting in established forms of speech and prescribed reitera- tions. As the prayer proceeds, at definite moments the appro- priate symbols are displayed and symbolic actions are performed, all designed to illustrate the prayer.
Such are the prayers of the sylvan man, designed to secure superlative happiness. The ceremonies are performed periodi- cally at appropriate seasons, and that they may not be neglected calendric systems are devised. These are painted on tablets of wood, on the tanned skins of animals, or on the walls of the house of worship, the calendars designating in some symbolic manner the time of the year when certain ceremonies are to be performed, the appropriate ceremonies for the time, the deities to whom the ceremonies are performed, and the characteristics of the ceremonies themselves.
As primitive music has a religious motive, so primordial carv- ing and painting have a religious motive. In like manner the first dramatic performances are religious, all designed to propitiate ghost deities and to secure their favors. When this stage of esthetic art as religion is fully developed, men have passed from savagery to barbarism. To rhythm melody is added in music, to outline drawing relief is added in graphics, and to dancing
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