en the whole truth, the
rite would have been incapable of discharging the really religious
function which it has in its history fulfilled. That function has been
to place and maintain the society which practises it in communion with
its god. Doubtless in the earliest stages of the history of the rite,
the communion thus felt to be established was prized and was mainly
sought for the external blessings which were believed {207} to follow
from it, or, as a means to avert the public disasters which a breach of
communion entailed. Doubtless it was only by degrees, and by slow
degrees, that the communion thus established came to be regarded as
being in itself the end which the rite of sacrifice was truly intended
to attain. But the communion of the worshippers with their god was not
a purpose originally foreign to the rite, and which, when introduced,
transformed the rite from what it at first was into something radically
different. On the contrary, it was present, even though not prominent
or predominant, from the beginning; and the rite, as a religious
institution, followed different lines of evolution, according as the
one aspect or the other was developed. Where the aspect under which
the sacrificial rite was regarded was that the offering was a gift made
to the deity in order to secure some specified temporal advantage, the
religious value of the rite diminished to the vanishing point in the
eyes both of those who, like Plato, could see the intrinsic absurdity
of pretending to make gifts to Him from whom alone all good things
come, and of those who felt that the sacrificial rite so conceived did
not afford the spiritual communion for which they yearned. Where even
the {208} sacrificial rite was regarded as a means whereby communion
between the worshipper and his god was attained or maintained, the
emphasis might be thrown on the rite and its due performance rather
than on the spiritual communion of which it was the condition. That is
to say, with the growth of formalism attention was concentrated on the
ritual and correspondingly withdrawn from the prayer which, from the
beginning, had been of the essence of the rite. By the rite of
sacrifice the community had always been brought into the presence of
the god it worshipped; and, in the prayers then offered on behalf of
the society, the society had been brought into communion with its god.
From that communion it was possible to fall away, even though the
performan