some that from the point of view of
modern science are perfectly ineffectual, as vain as eating tiger to
make you bold, we shall be justified in regarding them as pieces of
primitive science, eventually discarded indeed in the progress of
advancing knowledge, but originally practised (on the principle that
like produces like) as the natural means of producing the effect
desired. If we so regard them, we shall escape the error of
considering them to be magical; and we shall have no difficulty in
distinguishing them from the religious rites which may be combined with
them. Further, where harvest time is marked by the offering of
sacrifice and prayers of thanksgiving, we may not unreasonably take it
that the religious rites observed at seed time or the period analogous
to it are in the nature of sacrifice and prayers addressed to the
appropriate deity to beseech him to favour the growth of the plant or
animal in question. In a word, the practice of giving thanks to a god
at harvest time for the harvest creates a reasonable presumption that
prayer is offered to him at seed time; and if thanks are given at a
period analogous to {190} harvest time by a people like the Australian
black fellows, who have no domesticated plants or animals, prayers of
the nature of petitions may be offered by them at the period analogous
to seed time.

The deity to whom prayers are offered at the one period and
thanksgiving is made at the other may be, as in the case of the Aztec
Xilonen, or the Hindoo Maize-mother, the spirit of the plant envisaged
as a deity; or may be, not a "departmental" deity of this kind, but a
supreme deity having power over all things. But when we turn from the
regularly recurring acts of public worship connected with seed time and
harvest to the regularly recurring ceremonies at which the boys of a
tribe are initiated into the duties and rights of manhood, it is
obvious that the deity concerned in them, even if we assume (as is by
no means necessary) that he was originally "departmental" and at first
connected merely with the growth of a plant or animal, must be regarded
at the initiation ceremonies as a god having in his care all the
interests of that tribe of which the boys to be initiated are about to
become full members. Unmistakable traces of such a deity are found
amongst the Australian black fellows in the "father of all," "the
all-father" described by Mr. Howitt. The {191} worship of the
"all-father" is i