it is doubtful if the savage does not move quite indifferently to and fro across the supposed frontier-line between magic and religion, interspersing “bluff” with blandishment, spell with genuine prayer. Meanwhile the particular meanings of the detailed acts composing a complicated piece of ritual soon tend to lose themselves in a general sense of the efficacy of the rite as a whole to bring blessing and avert evil. Nay, unintelligibility is so far from invalidating a sacred practice that it positively supports it by deepening the characteristic atmosphere of mystery. Even the higher religions show a lingering predilection for cabalistic formulas.
Changes in Ritual.—Whilst ritual displays an extraordinary stability, its nature is of course not absolutely rigid; it grows, alters and decays. As regards its growth, there is hardly a known tribe without its elaborate body of magico-religious rites. In the exceptional instances where this feature is relatively absent (the Masai of E. Africa offer a case in point), we may suspect a disturbance of tradition due to migration or some similar cause. Thus there is always a pre-existing pattern in accordance with which such evolution or invention as occurs proceeds. Unconscious evolution is perhaps the more active factor in primitive times; imitation is never exact, and small variations amount in time to considerable changes. On the other hand, there is also deliberate innovation. In Australia councils of the older men are held day by day during the performance of their ceremonies, at which traditions are repeated and procedure determined, the effect being mainly to preserve custom but undoubtedly in part also to alter it. Moreover, the individual religious genius exercises no small influence. A man of a more original turn of mind than his fellows will claim to have had a new ceremony imparted to him in a vision, and such a ceremony will even be adopted by another tribe which has no notion of its meaning (Spencer and Gillen, ib. 272, 278, 281 n.). Meanwhile, since little is dropped whilst so much is being added, the result is an endless complication and elaboration of ritual. Side by side with elaboration goes systematization, more especially when local cults come to be merged in a wider unity. Thereupon assimilation is likely to take place to one or another leading type of rite—for instance, sacrifice or prayer. At these higher stages there is more need than ever for the expert in the shape of the priest, in whose hands ritual procedure becomes more and more of a conscious and studied discipline, the naïve popular elements being steadily eliminated, or rather transformed. Not but what the transference of ritualistic duties to a professional class is often the signal for slack and mechanical performance, with consequent decay of ceremonial. The trouble and worry of having to comply with the endless rules of a too complex system is apt to operate more widely—namely, in the religious society at large—and to produce an endless crop of evasions. Good examples of these on the part alike of priests and people are afforded by Toda religion, the degenerate condition of which is expressly attributed by Dr W. H. R. Rivers to “the over-development of the ritual aspect of religion” (The Todas, 454–55). It is interesting to observe that a religion thus atrophied tends to revert to purely magical practices, the use of the word of power, and so on (ib. ch. x.). It is to be noted, however, that what are known as ritual substitutions, though they lend themselves to purposes of evasion (as in the well-known case of the Chinese use of paper money at funerals), rest ultimately on a principle that is absolutely fundamental in magico-religious theory—namely, that what suggests a thing because it is like it or a part of it becomes that thing when the mystic power is there to carry the suggestion through.
The Classification of Rites.-More than one basis of division has suggested itself. From the sociological point of view perhaps the most important distinction in use is that between public and private rites. Whilst the former essentially belong to religion as existing to further the common weal, the latter have from the earliest times an ambiguous character, and tend to split into those which are licit—“sacraments,” as they may be termed—and those which are considered anti-social in tendency, and are consequently put beyond the pale of religion and assigned to the “black art” of magic. Or the sociologist may prefer to correlate rites with the forms of social organization—the tribe, the phratry, the clan, the family and so on. Another interesting contrast (seeing how primary a function of religion it is to establish a calendar of sacred seasons) is that between periodic and occasional rites—one that to a certain extent falls into line with the previous dichotomy. A less fruitful method of classing rites is that which arranges them according to their inner meaning. As we have seen, such meaning is usually acquired ex post facto, and typical forms of rite are used for many different purposes; so that attempts to differentiate are likely to beget more equivocations than they clear up. The fact is that comparative religion must be content to regard all its classifications alike as pieces of mere scaffolding serving temporary purposes of construction.
Negative Rites.—A word must be added on a subject, dealt with elsewhere (see Taboo, Genna), but strictly germane to the matter in hand. What have the best, if not the sole, right to rank as taboos are ritual interdictions (see M. Mauss in L’Année sociologique, ix. 249). Taboo, as understood in Polynesia, the home of the word, is as wide as, and no wider than, religion, representing one side or aspect of the sacred (see Religion). The very power that can help can also blast if approached improperly and without due precautions. Taboos are such precautions, abstinences prompted, not by simple dread or dislike, but always by some sort of respect as felt towards that which in other circumstances or in other form has healing virtue. Thus the negative attitude of the observer of taboo involves a positive attitude of reverence from which it becomes in practice scarcely distinguishable. To keep a fast, for instance, is looked upon as a direct act of worship. It must be noted, too, that, whereas taboo as at first conceived belongs to the magico-religious circle of ideas, implying a quasi-physical transference of sacredness from what has it to one not fit to receive it, it is very easily reinterpreted as an obligation imposed by the deity on his worshippers. The law observed by a primitive religious community abounds in negative precepts, and if early religion tends to be a religion of fear it is because the taboo-breaker provides the most palpable objective for human and divine sanctions. In the higher religions, to be pure remains amongst the most laudable of aspirations, and, even though the ceremonial aversion of a former age has become moralized, and a purity of heart set up as the ideal, it is on “virtues of omission” that stress is apt to be laid, so that a timorous propriety is too often preferred to a forceful grappling with the problems of life. There are signs, however, that the religious consciousness has at length come to appreciate the fact that the function of routine in religion as elsewhere is to clear the way for action.
