nd his worshippers partake. Throughout the whole
ceremony, whether we regard the spoken words or the acts performed,
there is no suggestion of magic and no possibility of twisting the
ceremony into a piece of magic intended to produce some desired result
or to exercise any constraint over the powers to which the ceremony is
addressed. The mental attitude is that of thankfulness.

Now, it is, I venture to suggest, impossible to dissociate from the
first-fruits ceremonials which I have described the ceremonies observed
by Australian black fellows on similar occasions. And it is also
impossible to overlook the differences between the ceremony in
Australia and the ceremony elsewhere. In Australia, as elsewhere, when
the time of year arrives at which the food becomes fit for eating,
{184} a ceremony has to be performed before custom permits the food to
be eaten freely. In Australia, as elsewhere, a ceremonial eating, a
sacramental meal, has to take place. But whereas elsewhere the god of
the community is expressly invited to partake of the sacramental meal,
even though he be not mentioned by name and though the invitation take
the curt form of "This is yours to eat," in Australia no words whatever
are spoken; the person who performs the ceremony performs it indeed
with every indication of reverential feeling, he eats solemnly and
sparingly, that is to say formally and because the eating is a matter
of ritual, but no reference is made by him so far as we know, to any
god. How then are we to explain the absence of any such reference?
There seems to me to be only one explanation which is reasonably
possible. It is that in the Australian ceremony, which would be
perfectly intelligible and perfectly in line with the ceremony as it
occurs everywhere else, the reference to the god who is or was invited
to partake of the first-fruits has in the process of time and, we must
add, in the course of religious decay, gradually dropped out. The
invitation may never have been more ample than the curt form, "This is
yours to eat." Even in the {185} absence of any verbal invitation
whatever, a gesture may long have sufficed to indicate what was in the
mind and was implied by the act of the savage performing the ceremony.
Words may not have been felt necessary to explain what every person
present at the ceremony knew to be the purpose of the rite. But in the
absence of any verbal formula whatever the purpose and meaning of the
rite