hip. It is found in distinct form, as is
pointed out above, only in superior tribes--it has not been discovered
in very low communities, and appears not to belong to the earliest
stratum of religious beliefs. But it rests on the view that all things
are endowed with life, and this view may be taken to be universal. The
doctrine of mana gradually vanishes before a better knowledge of the
human constitution,[436] a larger conception of the gods, and a greater
trust in them.[437]

+236+. Things and persons endowed with peculiar power, whether as seats
of mana or as abodes of spirits, are set apart by themselves, are
regarded with feelings of awe, and thus become "sacred." In process of
time the accumulated experience of generations builds up a mass of
sacred objects which become a part of the religious possessions of the
community. The quality of sacredness is sometimes attached to objects
and customs when these are regarded as necessary to the well-being of
the community, or highly convenient. A house, for example, represents
the life of the family, and is therefore a thing to be revered; and in
many tribes the walls, which guard the house against intrusion, and the
door and the threshold, which offer entrance into it, are considered
sacred; the hearth especially, the social center of the dwelling,
becomes a sacred place.

+237+. The savage communities with which we are acquainted all possess
their stock of such things--the beliefs concerning sacred objects are
held by all the members of the tribe. The development of the idea of
'sacred' is a social communal one, but it is impossible for us to say
precisely how all the individual sacred objects were selected, or what
was the exact attitude of primeval man toward all the things that are
now regarded as sacred.

+238+. The conception of power resident in certain things to control
human life is represented by our term "luck." The formulation of "luck"
systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain
point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by
the growth of the conception of natural law. But long after the grounds
of belief in luck have ceased to be accepted by the advanced part of the
community, many individual forms of good luck and bad luck maintain
themselves in popular belief.[438] Some of these beliefs may be traced
back to their savage sources, especially those that are connected with
animals; the origin of most of