originally performed. If the meaning
of the "singing" has passed entirely away, the meaning of the rites may
have suffered a change. At the present day the rite is understood to
increase the supply of dugongs or other articles of food. But it may
have been used originally for other purposes. Presumably rites of a
similar kind, certainly of some kind, are practised by the Australians
who have for their totem the blow-fly, the water-beetle, or the evening
star. But they do not {166} eat flies or beetles. Their original
purpose in choosing the evening star cannot have been to increase its
number. Nor can that have been the object of choosing the mosquito for
a totem. But if the object of the rites is not to increase the number
of mosquitoes, flies, and beetles, it need not in the first instance
have been the object with which the rites were celebrated in the case
of other totems.

Let us now return to Professor Tylor's statement that "at low levels of
civilisation there are many races who distinctly admit the existence of
spirits, but are not certainly known to pray to them even in thought."
The number of those races who are not known to pray is being reduced,
as we have seen. And I think we may go even farther than that and say
that where the existence of spirits is not merely believed in, but is
utilised for the purpose of establishing permanent relations between a
community and a spirit, we may safely infer that the community offers
prayer to the spirit, even though the fact may have escaped the notice
of travellers. The reason why we may infer it is that at the lower
levels of civilisation we meet with religion, in Hoeffding's words, "in
the guise of desire." We may put the same truth in other words and say
that religion is {167} from the beginning practical. Such prayers as
are known to us to be put up by the lowest races are always practical:
they may be definite petitions for definite goods such as harvest or
rain or victory in time of war; or they may be general petitions such
as that of the Khonds: "We are ignorant of what it is good for us to
ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it us." But in any case
what the god of a community is there for is to promote the good of the
community. It is because the savage has petitions to put up that he
believes there are powers who can grant his petitions. Prayer is the
very root of religion. When the savage has taken every measure he
knows of to prod