f all practical questions is how to live, the
occurrences which most effectually arrest attention are those which
affect the food supply of the community. If, then, the food supply
fails, the occurrence is due to some of the personal, or
quasi-personal, powers by whom the community is surrounded; and the
reason why such power so acted is found in the wrath which {205} must
have actuated him. The situation is abnormal, for famine is abnormal;
and it indicates anger and wrath on the part of the power who brought
it about. But it also implies that when things go on in the normal
way,--when the relations between the spirit and the community are
normal,--the attitude of the spirit to the community is peaceable and
friendly. Not only, however, does the community desire to renew
peaceable and friendly relations, where pestilence or famine show that
they have been disturbed: the community also desires to benefit by them
when they are in their normal condition. The spirits that can disturb
the normal conditions by sending pestilence or famine can also assist
the community in undertakings, the success of which is indispensable if
the community is to maintain its existence; for instance, those
undertakings on which the food supply of the community depends. Hence
the petitions which are put up at seed time, or, in the
pre-agricultural period, at seasons analogous to seed time. Hence,
also, the rites at harvest time or the analogous season, rites which
are instituted and developed for the purpose of maintaining friendly
relation and communion between the community, and the spirit whose
favour {206} is sought and whose anger is dreaded by the community.
Such sacrificial rites may indeed be interpreted as the making of gifts
to the gods; and they do, as a matter of fact, often come so to be
regarded by those who perform them. From this undeniable fact the
inference may then be drawn, and by many students of the science of
religion it is inferred, that from the beginning there was in such
sacrificial rites no other intention than to bribe the god or to
purchase his favour and the good things he had to give. But the
inference, which, when properly limited, has some truth in it, becomes
misleading when put forward as being the whole truth. Unless there
were some truth in it, the rite of sacrifice could never have developed
into the form which was denounced by the Hebrew prophets and
mercilessly exposed by Plato. But had that be