he other dead."

It was only in response to certain binding obligations that the living
observed all those costly and troublesome rules which were believed to
insure the welfare of the deceased. But this recognition of the primary
and real purpose of the food offerings as sustenance for the dead or the
gods must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that there is
widespread throughout the world a real fear of the dead and ghosts, and
that in many places food-offerings are made for the specific purpose "of
appeasing the fairies".

Mr. Donald Mackenzie tells me that offerings of milk and porridge are
made at the stone monuments in Scotland, and children carry meal in
their pockets to protect themselves from the fairies. For the dead went
to Fairyland.

Beliefs of a similar kind can be collected from most parts of the world:
but the point I specially want to emphasize is that they are _secondary_
rationalizations of a custom which originally had an utterly different
significance.

APPENDIX C.

Prof. Barton's statement (_supra_, p. 64) is typical of a widespread
misapprehension, resulting from the confusion between sexual relations
and the giving of life. At first primitive people did not realize that
the manifestations of the sex instinct had anything whatever to do with
reproduction. They were aware of the fact that women gave birth to
children; and the organ concerned in this process was regarded as the
giver of life, the creator. The apotheosis of these powers led to the
conception of the first deity. But it was only secondarily that these
life-giving attributes were brought into association with the sexual act
and the masculine powers of fertilization. Much confusion has been
created by those writers who see manifestations of the sexual factor and
phallic ideas in every aspect of primitive religion, where in most cases
only the power of life-giving plays a part.

Chapter II.

DRAGONS AND RAIN GODS.[130]

An adequate account of the development of the dragon-legend would
represent the history of the expression of mankind's aspirations and
fears during the past fifty centuries and more. For the dragon was
evolved along with civilization itself. The search for the elixir of
life, to turn back the years from old age and confer the boon of
immortality, has been the great driving force that compelled men to
build up the material and the intellectual fabric of civilization. The
dragon-legend is the histor